Northern Taiwan Mountain Communities Clean Up After Typhoon Bavi
Typhoon Bavi has left behind serious damage to infrastructure across northern Taiwan's mountains. And while road repairs are going ahead quickly, rushing floodwaters mean road travel in the area can still be dangerous.
Typhoon Bavi Brings Floods and Isolation to Taiwan Mountain Communities
REPORTER:
Roads turned to rivers in Hsinchu County’s rain-swollen mountains. Typhoon Bavi may have passed, but the flooding and destruction are not over yet. Around 100 roads crossing this steep terrain are damaged.
REPORTER:
Officials here say repair work has made fast progress. But as of Monday, two indigenous communities were still cut off, the roads in and out impassable.
Zeng Guo-dai (JIANSHI TOWNSHIP HEAD):
More than two-thirds of roads are cleared.
But the roads to Quri and Smangus are more seriously damaged.
REPORTER:
And even the cleared roads are still dangerous. A 21-year-old university student died after heading into the Hsinchu mountains for a camping trip — flung from their scooter due to strong floodwaters.
REPORTER:
It’s much the same situation in the mountains of neighboring Taoyuan, where two indigenous communities also lost road access.
Su Tso-hsi (FUXING DISTRICT HEAD):
There were 58 damaged areas
on provincial, municipal and rural roads.
They were all totally cleared on July 12
the day after the typhoon.
REPORTER:
A major cleanup also awaits at one of Taiwan’s major reservoirs—the Shihmen Reservoir in Taoyuan. After a long dry spell, the typhoon suddenly dumped 220 million tons of water over the reservoir’s catchment area—as much as the reservoir itself is designed to hold.
Chen Mi-chun (TAOYUAN FERRY AND YACHT ASSOC.):
We didn’t expect the water level to fall so low, to 239 meters.
Then, suddenly, in one night, it filled up.
Many small boats sank.
REPORTER:
After a stormy weekend, mountain communities across Taiwan’s north are assessing their losses—aiming to rebuild the infrastructure that keeps this part of the country connected.
Andy Hsueh and John Van Trieste for TaiwanPlus.
