Freak Typhoon Nari Ravages Taiwan-Taste of Things to Come?

Nari first reached typhoon strength on 6 September, but because of the pull of another typhoon and a high-pressure area, it remained stalled northeast of Taiwan, and did not make landfall at Santiao Point in Ilan County until 16 September. It continued to move very slowly, sometimes at as little as 3 kph. Even more strangely, after lashing northern Taiwan the typhoon did not move out to sea, but turned southwest toward Hsinchu, Miaoli and Taichung Counties. It then worked its way along the Central Mountain Range and through Chiayi and Tainan before finally moving offshore from Anping during the night of 18 September.

Nari is the first typhoon ever known to have crossed Taiwan from northeast to southwest from near Okinawa. The eye of the storm remained over Taiwan for almost 50 hours-ten times as long as most typhoons, which stay over land only four to five hours. Even senior meteorologists were astounded. It seems that all of us, from schoolchildren up, will need to revise our notions about the weather.

After a ten-day "warm-up," Nari teamed up with the northeastern monsoon to gather up vast quantities of moisture, which it began to dump on Taiwan from the evening of 16 September. The torrential rainfall broke single-day precipitation records in Taipei, Hsinchu, Chiayi and elsewhere.

This unremitting deluge battered Taiwan from end to end. Central and southern Taiwan were hit hard. The Alishan Mountain Railway, wrecked in the 9-21 earthquake and only recently partially reopened, was again devastated; the Putsu River in Chiayi County breached an embankment; and schools in Kaohsiung were forced to close. But in northern Taiwan, which bore the brunt of the typhoon, the devastation was horrendous. The record rainfall led to flooding of a magnitude not seen in centuries, and as the scale of the disaster snowballed, it exposed all kinds of problems.

The overnight rain had already put large parts of northern Taiwan under water by daybreak on 17 September. Overdeveloped Hsichih was quickly inundated because of the reduced capacity of the Keelung River since it was straightened. Of Taipei County's 29 townships and cities, only a handful, such as Tucheng and Tanshui, came off unscathed. In Taipei City, riverside and low-lying areas such as Nankang and Tunghu were flooded up to two stories deep. But worse was to come. Following the successive failure of 35 pumps in eight pumping stations-and in particular after Yucheng pumping station, built at a cost of NT$1.3 billion and said to be the largest in Southeast Asia, ceased functioning-rising waters that "welled up out of the ground" overwhelmed some of Taiwan's most prestigious shopping districts, such as Sungshan and Hsinyi. The damage is estimated at over NT$10 billion.

In the few years Taipei's Mass Rapid Transit system has been running, residents have come to rely on it heavily. But its designers placed too much trust in the effectiveness of flood defenses based on "200-year" flood levels. Barriers at station entrances are built to heights based on water levels expected once in two centuries. But inside the tunnels there are no barriers at all to water flow, so that once rainwater began to cascade into the MRT from the Nankang depot and Kunyang station on the Nankang line, and from the underground section of the conventional railway into the MRT lines that intersect beneath Taipei Railway Station, staff were powerless to prevent it inundating the MRT control center, which had been considered impregnable. Initial estimates predict that the MRT will suffer losses of NT$5 billion, and the Panchiao and Nankang lines may be shut down for up to six months. When Taipei City went back to work on 19 September, traffic ground to a halt, and although the city government laid on buses and introduced other measures in response to the MRT closure, at least two months of traffic chaos can be expected.

According to the central government's Disaster Response Center, Typhoon Nari left at least 84 people dead, 16 missing and over 200 injured islandwide. Nineteen counties and cities suffered damage. Losses to agriculture approached NT$2.1 billion, the basements of more than 6000 buildings were flooded, and 100,000 vehicles were immersed. Beyond these figures, such impacts as the loss of important computer data in flooded premises, and over a million homes and offices being left without water or electricity, created tangible and intangible losses that are impossible to calculate. Many residents also had all their household possessions ruined, leaving them with just the empty shells of their apartments. The survival of many businesses is now in jeopardy. In the areas that saw the worst of the flooding, some companies and schools remained unable to resume work or classes even in early October.

Typhoon Nari unleashed extraordinary rainfall, but human blunders also added to the scale of the disaster, and contributed to the flooding of some less low-lying areas. Firstly, years of excessive slopeland clearance and encroachment on riverbeds for building land have increased peak river flows while reducing rivers' flow capacity, and the engineering solution of building ever higher embankments proved on this occasion to be spectacularly ineffective. Secondly, and most outrageously, freight containers stored in yards along the upper Keelung River were swept downstream by the flood waters, demolishing bridges in Keelung City, Taipei County and Taipei City, and creating obstructions that were responsible for much of the deadly flooding at locations such as Nuannuan, Chitu and Jen-ai in Keelung, and Hsichih and Juifang in Taipei County. The county and city governments suddenly became the targets of universal censure for having habitually tolerated container yards' occupation of the riverbed.

As people set about cleaning up their homes, the government declared its determination to improve its crisis management capabilities, and quickly approved assistance payments and various tax relief measures. Meanwhile, prosecutors began investigating whether kickbacks from companies to officials were behind the runaway containers and the failed pumping stations. But for the million or more households and businesses affected by the disaster, all these actions look like little more than "20-20 hindsight." Each natural disaster exposes yet another litany of shortcomings, driving public anger and frustration to boiling point.

In addition to the stalwart efforts of civic groups such as Tzu Chi Buddhist Compassion Relief, a glimmer of comfort can be found in the way that county commissioners and city mayors including Frank Hsieh, Hsu Cheng-hsien and Li Ya-ching stretched out a helping hand by dispatching rescue teams to the north. The people of Chungliao Rural Township in Nantou County, which suffered badly in the 9-21 earthquake, also headed for Taipei City's Neihu district with shovels, scoops, brooms and pumps, to help pump out floodwater, clear away mud and sweep the streets, in order to repay their debt of gratitude to volunteers from Taipei who helped them in their hour of need two years ago.

In fact, "freak" Typhoon Nari seems very much to fit the trend of climate change. Liao Chung-ming, director of National Taiwan University's department of atmospheric sciences, says that with global warming, extreme and unusual weather patterns will occur with increasing frequency. If this is so, the implications for our disaster preparedness and response system are manifest, and the government should create comprehensive disaster relief systems and infrastructure suitable for future needs.

The greenhouse effect and global warming are the result of mankind's pursuit of all-out consumption and overexploitation of natural resources. If we do not awaken from our dreams of prosperity, then as disaster follows on disaster, we may only be able to ask: will nature give us another chance?

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By dawn on 17 September, the unprecedented deluge unleashed by Typhoon Nari had brought the Keelung River to within a meter of the danger mark. A Central News Agency photographer recorded this frightening scene not long before the river began to overflow its embankments. (photo by Su Sheng-pin, CNA)