Survivors sit aboard a military CH-47 helicopter, during the evacuation of the flooded village of Namahsia in Kaohsiung county yesterday. The survivors were among a group of 103 airlifted to safety. CNA

TAIPEI: Floods and landslides triggered by Morakot leave Taiwan in tears.

As casualties and losses pile up in the aftermath of the latest natural disaster, Taiwan weeps and wonders what the future holds.

Mud flows that buried a whole village in southern Taiwan, and floods that washed away dozens of houses on the east coast were natural phenomena that people on an island of extreme rainfall intensity, steep river slopes and brittle shale hills inevitably face.

In the wake of the calamity, Fan Liang-hsiu, vice chairman of the "National Disaster Prevention and Protection Commission", suggested Tuesday that villagers whose homes were destroyed by the mudflows over the weekend should be relocated, because mudslides in mountainous areas very often reoccurred in the same locales under torrential rain.

But most villagers, he said, refuse to leave the land where they have lived for years, even for generations.

In the past, the government has worked out plans for 26 mountain villages to be relocated, but only two - one in Taichung county and the other in Pingtung county - were moved to locations which are much safer in times of heavy rainfall.

The rest continue to brave areas that are most vulnerable to nature's powerful forces, and they may face even more destructive mud and debris flows in the future during typhoons as climate change may render the weather even more unpredictable - and dangerous.

Statistics compiled by the Water Resources Agency indicate that average annual precipitation in Taiwan is 2,500 mm, but up to 80 percent of rain falls between May and October, during the summer typhoon season, in particular.

This uneven rainfall distribution was particularly evident last week. It was a week that started with Taiwan wrestling over how long it could to ration water in the face of a worsening drought. The week ended with a three-day torrent that triggered the worst flooding Taiwan has seen in 50 years.

As typhoon Morakot hovered near and over Taiwan, it brought more than 2,000 mm of rainfall to Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties between August 6-8.

In the southeastern county of Taitung, over 1,600 mm of rainfall in the mountains triggered serious mudslides. Debris flows and rapids turned the rivers into rampaging forces that swept away anything in their path.

Shocking scenes of the disaster were televised around the world. There was the dramatic collapse of the Chin Shuai Hotel at the hotsprings resort of Jhihben on August 9. Floodwaters eroded the riverbank where the hotel stood and undermined its foundations.

While there is certain to be plenty of finger-pointing during the post-disaster period, former Water Resources Agency director Huang Ching-san said that human efforts to control water flows could be in vain when facing the extreme amount of rainfall seen in recent days.

He suggested that while the government has invested heavily in regulating rivers and channeling water to prevent floods, equally important tasks will be to avoid reckless land development, especially in mountainous areas, and to reinforce soil and water conservation efforts.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 08/13/2009 page2)