The government evacuated more than 6,700 villagers as Tropical Storm Parma lingered off the southern coast yesterday, bringing heavy rains that caused landslides.
The evacuations, some of them forced, took place in Yilan, Hualien, Nantou, Pingtung, Kaohsiung and Taitung counties as fears mounted that downpours could cause mountainsides to collapse.
At 9:15pm, Parma was 250km southwest of Oluanbi (鵝鑾鼻) and continued to hover in the Bashi Channel, which separates Taiwan and the Philippines. The weather system, which packed gusts of up to 101kph, was downgraded to a tropical storm earlier in the day.
Forecasters at the Central Weather Bureau said that Parma would linger southwest of Taiwan for one or two days, and that its outer bands, coupled with the prevailing northeasterly monsoon in the region, could continue to bring heavy rains to eastern and northern Taiwan.
Although Parma has not made landfall on Taiwan, the nation has experienced heavy rain in the last two days. Yilan County’s Sansing Township (三星) bore the brunt of the storm and was drenched with 700mm of rain over 36 hours.
Many schools and offices in Yilan were closed yesterday as rains submerged roads, houses and rice paddies.
PHOTO: SAM YEH, AFP
“It’s the first time my home has ever been flooded,” said Hsueh Chin-sheng, a resident in Yilan’s Dongshan Township (冬山), where flooding of about 500mm was recorded.
“The rain was so heavy. It was as if someone was deliberately dumping water on you,” Hsueh said.
“The accumulated rainfall in Yilan County increased to 454mm in 24 hours,” Central Emergency Operations Center (CEOC) Deputy Commander Frank Fan (范良銹) said.
Yilan County Commissioner Lu Kuo-hua (呂國華) announced at 8am yesterday that elementary schools and junior high schools would be closed yesterday afternoon and left the decision on whether to cancel work to township chiefs, which caused public complaints.
Initially, nine of Yilan’s 12 townships decided to suspend work, but later all 12 townships declared yesterday a typhoon day.
In the past, the county or city government decided whether to declare typhoon days, but the Executive Yuan said that townships could make their own decisions this time.
The CEOC said Sansing decided at midnight on Sunday to cancel school yesterday and Dongshan Township made a decision at 7:15am to follow suit.
The Yilan County Government made the cancelation announcement at 8am.
The county government last night also declared today a typhoon day, canceling work and classes.
Fan yesterday called on people living in low-lying areas in Taipei County’s Sinjhuang City (新莊), Shulin City (樹林), Jhonghe City (中和), Yonghe City (永和) and Gongliao (貢寮), Rueifang (瑞芳), Shuangsi (雙溪), Wanli (萬里) and Jinshan (金山) townships to stay vigilant because accumulated rainfall had approached or exceeded alert levels.
Authorities have also heightened alerts for certain rivers, urging nearby residents to keep a close eye on the water level.
Rivers and streams on red alert were in Yilan County’s Sansing, Dongshan and Datong (大同) townships.
A yellow alert was declared for streams in Taipei County’s Rueifang and Wanli townships, Yilan County’s Nanao (南澳) and Yuanshan (員山) townships, Taitung County’s Dawu (大武), Guangfu (光復) Sioulin (秀林), Wanrong (萬榮) and Shoufeng (壽豐) townships, and Hualien County’s Fongbin Township (豐濱).
The CEOC has set up a hotline, (02) 8196-6999, for emergency calls.
However, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who serves as commander of the center, said members of the public who require help should first dial the regular 119 emergency number and use the center’s hotline only when the 119 line is engaged or disconnected.
In order to avoid jamming emergency lines, the minister suggested that the public report disasters to local borough or village chiefs who will compile the information and relay it to emergency centers operated by local governments.
Meanwhile, the captain and two crew members of a Panama-registered cargo ship named Eufonia, which sank off Taiwan’s Penghu island chain on Sunday afternoon, were rescued yesterday by marine search and rescue personnel from Taiwan and China, but 11 other crew members remained missing, the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau said yesterday.
The bureau said it received calls for help from the ship at 5:25pm on Sunday and immediately asked the search command center under the Executive Yuan to launch sea and air rescue operations.
The center dispatched military rescue helicopters to the area, while rescue helicopters and two patrol boats were also sent by the Ministry of the Interior and the Coast Guard Administration, the bureau said.
The ship’s captain, who is from Myanmar, was rescued by a Chinese ship around 9am yesterday, while two crew members from Indonesia were saved by Taiwanese vessels and were sent to a hospital in Chiayi County later yesterday.
Also See: CPI down on weak demand: DGBAS
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS