Hundreds flown to safety after Taiwan storm

CISHAN, Taiwan - Military helicopters ferried stricken villagers to safety Tuesday from remote Taiwanese communities hit by Typhoon Morakot that left hundreds feared trapped by a torrent of mud and rock that buried their homes.

Choppers hovered over affected villages looking for signs of life. While rains were still falling, floodwaters receded Tuesday, and many of the aircraft were landing to send out squads of soldiers to look for survivors, photos released by the military showed. Special forces found more than 900 people who had fled three villages in the south, according to the military.

One helicopter crashed into a mountain as it flew on a mission to rescue villagers from the island's heavily wooded south, which was worst hit by the storm. Disaster official Chen Chung-hsien said it was unclear if the two pilots and one technician had survived the crash.

Morakot, which means "emerald" in Thai language, dumped as much as 80 inches of rain over the weekend on Taiwan, the worst flooding in 50 years. It then moved on to China, where authorities evacuated 1.5 million people and some 10,000 homes were destroyed.

Eight people have died in three provinces in eastern China, the Civil Affairs Ministry said. Taiwanese authorities put the confirmed death toll from Morakot at 62 and listed 57 people as missing, but that does not include residents in the village of Shiao Lin, where several hundred remain unaccounted for after a mudslide buried their farming settlement on Sunday.

Dazed and bewildered
Officials said more than 300 people were brought out Tuesday on up to 120 helicopter flights to an improvised landing zone at Cishan Junior High School. The people, many looking dazed and bewildered, came from Shiao Lin and surrounding villages.

At the landing strip, a Taiwanese army Huey helicopter arrived with three women from the mudslide-ravaged area on one of Tuesday's last flights. They were led to a waiting van and driven off to a shelter housing victims of the disaster.

On the fringes of the landing strip, anxious relatives waited for words of their loved ones.

"I have seven relatives in Shiao Lin whom I haven't heard from since Aug. 8," said one woman who gave her surname as Chen. "I beg the government to do something to help them."

Slideshow   Typhoon's wrath View images of the destruction and the evacuations. more photos

Cishan itself is without water supply and many surrounding communities remain cut off because floodwaters have washed out roads. On the outskirts of the town, soldiers were helping local residents dig the mud from their homes and businesses.

Later, army special forces found another 200 survivors from Shiao Lin sheltering in a nearby field, said Major General Hu Jui-chou. Meanwhile, more than 500 from Min Tsu village and 200 from Chin He village were also rescued, according to Hu and Lieutenant Colonel Tai Chan-te. All three villages are near one another.

Hundreds may still be trapped in remote villages, though the exact number of people missing, including in worst-hit Shiao Lin, remained unclear. The village's isolation complicated reporting about its fate. Shiao Lin was cut off after floodwaters destroyed a bridge about eight miles (12 kilometers) away. Access to the area is still restricted to the military.

Taiwan's National Fire Agency said 100 villagers were buried alive when the mudslide hit, though it did not offer details to back up that assessment. Some of the 30 residents of Shiao Lin who were among those rescued Monday said the figure was far higher — perhaps as many as 600.

‘Two loud bangs’
A woman rescued Monday told Taiwan's China Times newspaper that she fled with her husband and their baby from their two-story Shiao Lin home minutes before the mudslide buried it.

"We heard two loud bangs," the woman surnamed Chi was quoted as saying. "The sky was filled with dust like a volcanic eruption, and flood waters, mud and rocks streamed onto the roads."

Television footage showed the streets of another village covered by thick mud and rubble. A 51-year-old man from Jilai village was swept 1.2 miles away when the mudslides that struck Shiao Lin rushed down a nearby mountain. According to news reports, he survived by holding on to a log.

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