Reuters
[Photo Credit: Reuters]
Residents in a Taiwan town where flooding from a typhoon killed 17 people sought shelter on Wednesday fearing further disaster after a lake burst its banks, as Premier Cho Jung-tai called for an inquiry into what went wrong with evacuation orders.
Sub-tropical Taiwan, frequently hit by typhoons, normally has a well-oiled disaster mechanism that averts mass casualties by moving people out of potential danger zones quickly.
But many residents in Guangfu, an eastern town in the beauty spot of Hualien, thronged by tourists, said there was insufficient warning when a lake overflowed during Tuesday’s torrential rains brought by Super Typhoon Ragasa.
The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the island’s sparsely populated east, burst and sent a wall of water into Guangfu.
Cho said the immediate priority was to find those missing. The original number of 152 was revised down to just 17 after many people were located alive.
Fire officials said all the dead and missing were in Guangfu, where the waters destroyed a major road bridge across a river.
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