Taiwan struggles through rains to save survivors

Hundreds of survivors from Typhoon Morakot were stranded in villages paralysed by mudslides in Taiwan as fierce rain slowed down helicopter rescues and the hunt for many more feared buried under the rubble.The army said it had found 1,000 villagers from the worst-hit southern village of Shiao Lin and two more communities over the past two days. At least 300 of them have been airlifted to safety, said spokesman for relief operations Col Chang Kuo-bin. But hundreds more — nobody knows how many — are still feared missing.

The official death toll in Taiwan stands at 63, and authorities could only confirm 61 missing. Eight more are confirmed to have died in China. Taiwan’s government has said it is sending more than 4,000 extra soldiers to speed up rescue efforts. Yesterday (Wednesday) rescue workers found more than 500 more survivors sheltering in an elementary school in the Bao Lai area, in the rural southern county of Kaohsiung. They plan airlift them out today (Thursday). Bad weather meant army helicopters could only manage to rescue a handful of survivors from the cut-off villages in Kaohsiung's forested mountains to Cishan, a town where a school is being used as an emergency landing pad.
Three crew members of a government helicopter were killed, on Tuesday, when it crashed into a mountainside in heavy rain.

For now, the people stranded in those remote villages are safe and the army had airlifted in basic food and supplies.
Taiwanese TV station ETTV showed Shiao Lin village buried by a sea of mud and rock, with only two buildings left standing. A bedraggled cat skulked in a crack under the rubble. But this is only a snapshot of the vast devastation left by the huge mudslide triggered when Morakot struck at the weekend, dumping as much as 80 inches (two meters) of rain on the island. "The temple seemed to be there, and over there was the police station," one villager told the TV crew, pointing to different parts of the flattened village.Then he pointed to a strip of mud lined and rocks next to a hill — which he said had been a road. He showed cameras an empty wasteland beside it, and said: "I used to live there." Another man told how the mudslides had flattened the village of Hsiaolin. "I saw the mountain crumbling in seconds almost like an explosion and bury half of our neighbourhood," Huang Chin-bao, 56, told AFP news agency. He said he and 40 neighbours were guided by his two dogs to higher ground. "The dogs are our saviours," he said.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children