[quote=“Baas Babelaas”]Work cancelled here in Xiamen, pissing down fairly hard. My (fairly sturdy) umbrella got buckled on the way home from sorting out my new apartment.
Let’s see what Saturday brings. I know I’m losing currency not being able to do my IELTS work (this is the first time I’ve cursed a typhoon day :raspberry: ).
Hope no lives are lost - some people insist on being outdoors, others don’t have a choice. Loads of ships anchored off Xiamen now, looks like one big-ass parking lot…[/quote]
Unfortunately lots of lives lost already. Buses washed into the sea, temples flooded with mud. It’s not been nice.
Seems one bus with at least 19 on board is missing. While 7 people have been pulled out dead from a house in suao.
Typhoons are killers.
Taiwan has lost EW highway’s eastern part from Lishan to Kukuan to the 921 quake and subsequent later typhoon. Lost the Southern Cross to Morakot. And now the Suao-Hualian has proven its danger once again. Broken until at least mid to end Nov.
I wonder why roads that are known to be dangerous were not closed off as the rains approached? Wouldnt it have been better to have closed the Suao-Hualian a few days ago? Rather then having buses smashed into and people killed. And hundreds having to be rescued? Those people shouldve been put on trains to taipei from hualian instead.
The govt in taiwan has got to wake up. Morakot now results in them being careful bout evacuating remote mountain villages that may be in danger. Now they must learn from this typhoon that certain roads and bridges must be closed as soon as the rains come or a day before at the latest.
Wow. Really sobering photos. Thanks for sharing those. Thoughts and prayers for all those affected.
That road is a bit scary in the best of weather. I can’t imagine traveling on it during a typhoon. Looking at some of those photos, an end-of-November re-opening seems a bit optimistic.
Tommy those tour bus operaters also know these roads are dangerous when heavy rains abound.
Maybe you could ask them why they insist on taking tours on roads well known to have dangerous landslides.[/quote]
Maybe it’s because these tour bus operators want to make money, and that any risks (however slight in their mind) is worth it compared to the payout they get.
There’s already a vociferous debate in government circles about whether that road should be closed when severe bad weather is approaching. Many in the central government are in favour, but there’s strong opposition from many Hualien residents, and the county chief has spoken out against it.
[Edit: The automatic pinyinizer that misspells place names like H U A L I E N as Hualian is very annoying.]
I suspected that was the case. Typhoon preparedness seems to be much better these days but a lot still depends on the counties cooperating.
Let’s hope these accidents propel the side of sanity to the fore. I can imagine that the loss of Chinese tourist lives will have some effect on swaying even the Hualien gov as many in China already believe Taiwan to be a dangerous place to visit. A few more accidents such as this week’s and Hualien may find itself sidelined altogether.
[quote=“tommy525”]Seems one bus with at least 19 on board is missing. While 7 people have been pulled out dead from a house in Suao.
Typhoons are killers.
Taiwan has lost EW highway’s eastern part from Lishan to Kukuan to the 921 quake and subsequent later typhoon. Lost the Southern Cross to Morakot. And now the Suao-Hualian has proven its danger once again. Broken until at least mid to end Nov.
I wonder why roads that are known to be dangerous were not closed off as the rains approached? Wouldnt it have been better to have closed the Suao-Hualian a few days ago? Rather then having buses smashed into and people killed. And hundreds having to be rescued? Those people shouldve been put on trains to taipei from Hualian instead.
The govt in taiwan has got to wake up. Morakot now results in them being careful bout evacuating remote mountain villages that may be in danger. Now they must learn from this typhoon that certain roads and bridges must be closed as soon as the rains come or a day before at the latest.
Although it is not as bad down town here at my restaurant even now we still have very strong winds. I decided to not open my restaurant today because most of the workers come on scooters and I thought it still potentially dangerous to ride here. In theory things are back to normal work wise but where I am it does not feel like it with regards to the wind and waves.
Yesterday they took the highly unusual step of preparing to evacuate the whole area here at ChaiShan. They did not do that even during 8/8 last year. The reason given was the potential for landslides. No doubt this was influenced by what happened last year in Kaohsiung/Gaoxiong county and perhaps that elections are coming up so the government feels the need to play things safe here.
But truth be told I figured it out by myself, used the trusty
Anyways, Megi has yet to hit Xiamen, they say by 6pm this evening. At which time I’ll be on my boat in the living room, dropping anchor for the evening and putting out some reels for dinner :s
Tommy those tour bus operaters also know these roads are dangerous when heavy rains abound.
Maybe you could ask them why they insist on taking tours on roads well known to have dangerous landslides.[/quote]
+1 In just six months of thinking about and enjoying Taiwan, I have seen enough of those photos to keep me off those highways, maybe forever, and definitely during the stormy weather.
I really feel for the people on those buses… it must have been terrifying. I hope some of them survived.
Its doubtful the one missing bus will have any survivors. And on the bus that was crushed there were injuries but no deaths but the chinese tour guide as well as the taiwanese driver of that bus are missing, possibly dead. They and the other bus were part of the same larger group. Could be that the driver and tour guide went over to look for the other bus or something and more slides happened or what?
Going over the side of the Suao-Hualian mulepath (its barely a road) under a landslide is probably not survivable.
That road should always be closed when rain exceeds a certain level.
Apparently they are now deciding on what levels of rainfall to use to close this road in the future. Pretty scary scene.
The band of clouds stretching across Taiwan and southern Japan into the Pacific is an indication of an almost stationary front that you can see on this map:
This front has brought us more than a day of ongoing thunder and lightning, repeated squalls and high waves that have disrupted fishing, and heavy rains that have led to flooding from Ilan county to southern Japan. I recall rainfall of that sort in central Japan in September 2002, in the wake of a typhoon that had passed westward over Okinawa Island (i remember that the train line to Nagoya was temporarily under water in some places and out of commission for three days). Just did a search for that typhoon (looks like it had already dissipated over China at that time) and found a paper on this event:
In terms of nature weather events like this are perhaps normal, but with us humans increasingly carving up the surface of the planet, the consequences of nature’s actions seem to get worse over time.
(Note to people reading this after October 23: the weather related satellite photos and maps i used as reference continuously change, so the information i mentioned here will not be there anymore)
[quote=“tommy525”]Its doubtful the one missing bus will have any survivors. And on the bus that was crushed there were injuries but no deaths but the Chinese tour guide as well as the taiwanese driver of that bus are missing, possibly dead. They and the other bus were part of the same larger group. Could be that the driver and tour guide went over to look for the other bus or something and more slides happened or what?
[/quote]
From what I’ve been seeing on the news, the buses went down in different places - one into a ravine and it’s almost completely buried and completely full of rocks and gravel - no survivors. The unfortunate victims would have been completely ground up. The other went over the cliff into the ocean. All the passengers got out, so probably the driver and guide helped the passengers out and then went down with the bus.
