Residents in a Taiwan town where flooding from a typhoon killed 17 people sought shelter yesterday fearing further disaster after a lake burst its banks, as Premier Cho Jung-tai called for an inquiry into what went wrong with evacuation orders.
Sub-tropical Taiwan, frequently hit by typhoons, normally has a well-oiled disaster mechanism that averts mass casualties by moving people out of potential danger zones quickly.
But many residents in Guangfu, an eastern town in the beauty spot of Hualien, thronged by tourists, said there was insufficient warning when a lake overflowed during Tuesday’s torrential rains brought by Super Typhoon Ragasa.
The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the island’s sparsely populated east, burst and sent a wall of water into Guangfu.
Cho said the immediate priority was to find those missing. The original number of 152 was revised down to just 17 after many people were located alive.
“For the 14 who have tragically passed away, we must investigate why evacuation orders were not carried out in the designated areas,” he told reporters in Guangfu, before the death toll was adjusted up in the afternoon, to 17. “This is not about assigning blame, but about uncovering the truth.”
Fire officials said all the dead and missing were in Guangfu, where the waters destroyed a major road bridge across a river.
As heavy rain continued on and off in Hualien, police cars sounded sirens for a new flood warning in Guangfu yesterday, sending people scrambling for safer areas as residents and rescuers shouted: “The flood waters are coming, run fast.”
Deputy disaster command centre chief Huang Chao-chin said with rainfall easing and much of the water from the lake already released, he did not expect a repeat of Tuesday’s mass flooding.
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