Taiwan needs your help

232332   Wed Aug 12, 2009 6:11 am GMT
Please donate money as much as you can to the families of the survivors. Please help those survivors as much as you can.

Mudslides have caused devastation in the aftermath of the typhoon

Hundreds of people are feared to have died after a landslide triggered by Typhoon Morakot swept into a southern mountain village.

Rescue workers have been trying to find survivors in Hsiaolin and surrounding villages but the military says more than 700 are trapped and possibly dead.

The typhoon struck Taiwan at the weekend, dumping record amounts of rain and washing out roads and bridges.

The storm also hit mainland China, where six people were reported killed.

Two died when a landslide submerged a group of houses late on Monday.

It was initially believed that the buildings were apartment blocks, with many families buried, but Chinese officials later confirmed that they were one-storey homes which had mostly been evacuated before the landslide.

'The mountain fell'

Helicopters have been dropping rescuers into the village of Hsiaolin, in the mountains of southern Taiwan, and winching out residents, trapped for several days by landslides that have cut road access and buried many houses.

See map of storms in East Asia

About 150 people who survived Sunday's landslide by reaching higher ground have now been pulled out of the area to safety, and more survivors were rescued on Monday and Tuesday.

But more than 700 people were trapped, possibly dead, in Hsiaolin and a neighbouring village of Namahsia, Maj Gen Hu Jui-chou told Reuters news agency.

His statement tallies with testimony of survivors, who have spoken of hundreds of people still buried in their homes in Hsiaolin, which was home to about 1,000 people.

"I was watching from my house upstairs," said one survivor, Lee Chin-long.

"The whole mountain just fell off. When I saw that, I started to run. Almost every house was gone, except for a couple."

A helicopter with three people on board involved in a mission to rescue residents of a different mountain village was reported to have crashed in bad weather. It was not known if there were any survivors.

Typhoon Morakot dropped some two metres (80 inches) of rain on Taiwan this weekend, causing the worst flooding in five decades.

Rivers have burst their banks, washing away buildings, roads and bridges, cutting power lines and flooding city streets as well as farmland. Losses to the farming industry are estimated at $152m (£92m).

Taiwan's official death toll from Morakot stands at 62, with 57 officially missing.
232332   Wed Aug 12, 2009 6:15 am GMT
Rescue helicopter crashes in Pingtung

HELP: The rescue chopper was on its second round of deliveries to help stranded villagers when it crashed in the mountains of Pingtung County, an official said

A rescue helicopter ferrying supplies to people stranded after Typhoon Morakot crashed in the mountains of Pingtung County yesterday, the National Airborne Services Corps (NASC) said.

The fate of the three crewmen — the pilot, the co-pilot and a crewmember — was unclear at press time.

A Central News Agency report last night cited a source from the NASC as saying that the three were probably dead.

The NASC sent another helicopter and a team of ground forces to search for the three crewmembers immediately after the incident.

The report quoted an NASC pilot as saying he saw three bodies on the mountainside, suggesting that they might have been thrown out of the helicopter when it crashed.

It said the rescue helicopter was unable to land on the mountainside to approach the crew because of the steeply sloped terrain.

It said it would take about four or five hours for ground forces to reach the location.

Confirming the incident at a press conference later yesterday, Captain Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇賢) of the NASC said that the UH-1H chopper crashed at 3:32pm in the Yila Valley in Wutai Township (霧台).

“The helicopter apparently hit the mountain before plunging into the Yila River valley,” Chen said.

“It happened as it began its second round of deliveries in the afternoon. It had completed five trips this morning, delivering a total of 2,100kg in relief goods and lifting 50 people and four bodies from the disaster area,” Chen said.
Chen said the three crew members were 42-year-old pilot Chang Shun-fa (張順發), 47-year-old co-pilot Wang Tsung-li (王宗立) and 43-year-old crew chief Huang Mei-chih (黃鎂智).

Chen said that the cause of the accident still needed to be investigated.

“Weather conditions and the age of the helicopter were both possible causes of the accident,” Chen said, adding that the chopper, built in 1976, had undergone maintenance in June and flown 36 hours since its last examination.

Chang had accumulated 3,285 flight hours and Wang 5,045 hours, Chen said.