Taiwan's killer typhoon

Damaged buildings are seen after Typhoon Morakot swept Kaohsiung county in southern Taiwan, Aug. 11, 2009. (Stringer/Reuters)

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CISHAN, Taiwan — The blasts came every day, three times a day, so strong they made his house rattle.

Workers dynamited the mountain above Li Hui-ming's village over and over, as part of a project to divert water to a reservoir about 12 miles away.

On Aug. 9, around 5 p.m, says Li, the mountain hit back.

A wave of mud and rocks swept down over Minzu Village after three days of torrential rains. In the panicked aftermath, 40 to 50 people were yanked out of the quicksand-like mud by their fellow villagers. Some could only manage to raise a desperate hand above the muck; that was enough for others to grab onto and pull.

About 25 weren't so lucky. "We even heard some of them crying out for help," remembered Li. "But because they were too deep in the mud, we couldn't reach them. They were buried alive."

Such tragic tales have filled Taiwan's media in the past two weeks, as the island struggles to recover from its deadliest typhoon in at least 50 years. Another village not far from Li's, Shiaolin, was the worst hit, with nearly 400 feared dead in a separate mudslide.

The official death toll stood at 141 as of Thursday afternoon, with another 440 missing and now presumed dead. Now, as emergency relief efforts wind down, Taiwan is asking why this particular storm took such a high human toll. Island-wide, blame has fallen on the government for its slow and disorganized response to the disaster.

But in this part of typhoon-battered southern Taiwan, many displaced villagers say there's another culprit: the water diversion project in the mountains above their homes.

Li and others say the constant dynamiting, over at least two years, loosened the soil above their villages and so created the geological equivalent of a ticking time bomb. Record rainfall — almost 10 feet in just three days — was just the trigger.

"If it weren't for this project, I'm sure it [the mudslide] never would have happened," said Li. "This wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster."

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china-and-its-neighbors/090820/taiwan-typhoon-hidden-killer