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TAIPEI : At least 38 people were killed and another 62 missing in Taiwan’s worst flooding in half a century after Typhoon Morakot battered the island, rescuers and officials said on Tuesday.
Some 35 people were also injured as the typhoon lashed the island with a record three metres (118 inches) of rain over the weekend, submerging houses, streets and bringing down bridges, said the National Fire Agency.
Rescue missions were in full swing Tuesday with the authorities rushing out helicopters to remote areas cut off by fallen bridges or raging rivers.
Reports said up to 600 people were still trapped in a village devastated by mudslides but authorities would not confirm the number.
“My house is gone. We have been trapped for four days and we are scared,” a man from Hsiaolin village, in southern Kaohsiung county, told reporters after being airlifted to safety.
Armoured vehicles and marine landing craft, as well as rubber dinghies, were mobilised in a rescue operation involving nearly 6,000 troops, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.
In central and southern Taiwan, heavy rain caused widespread floods and mudslides, particularly in the county of Pingtung, where thousands of people had been trapped in three coastal townships.
Pingtung county government said residents from worst-hit areas took shelter in government facilities as the region is still without electricity and water despite receding floodwater.
Typhoon Morakot has caused at least five billion Taiwan dollars (156 million US) in agricultural damage while 61,000 houses were left without power and 850,000 homes without water, according to officials.
Among the missing were 14 workers who disappeared when their makeshift shelter beside a river in Kaohsiung was washed away by rising floodwaters early Sunday.
A typhoon that struck Taiwan in August 1959 killed 667 people and left some 1,000 missing.