Typhoon Morakot

Typhoon Morakot hit Taiwan on August 7 and for 4 days it has already set the rainfall record in more than 50 years of time, causing catastrophic damages to southern part of Taiwan. The major goal of this website is to collect information from twitter.com and plurk.com, parse it through human checks, and deliver it the the needed. At the mean time, we have volunteers situated in various emergency centers in local county government, thus making sure that all information is able to get through the rescue teams.

We are working on this 24 hours a day and more people are coming to join the task force. For further information, please email adct @ adct.org.tw. God bless Taiwan.

Typhoon Morakot caused severe damage to the southern part of Taiwan with record breaking rainfall of 2,900 millimeters (114 inches) in 3 days. The highest single day regional regional record was broken on August 8th, at 1403 millimeters (55 inches). To put it in perspective, Vancouver's average annual rainfall is only 1117 mm (44 inches). Some bulidings were flooded up to the second floor, many counties isolated. Military personels have been deployed to help with the rescuing and reconstruction efforts. In Taitung County, segments of freeway and railway were washed away, 20 houses were washed into the sea, and a major hotel collapsed.

More than 150,168 people remain without power, and 28,282 households have had their phone lines cut, according to the latest statement from the National Fire Agency. Electricity was restored in some areas after disruptions that affected 1.4 million people, according to the statement. The storm caused an estimated NT$754.8 million ($23 million) in damage to crops, the agency said.

Source: bloomberg.com

A Taiwanese blogger Billy Pan created a public Google map documenting the affected areas. The latest development is constantly updated on a website, Twitter, and Plurk. The sources are in Chinese, but the Google map is a visual representation of how serious a damage typhoon Morakot had caused.

Typhoons hit Taiwan frequently every summer. People are usually well prepared. Morakot is certainly one of a kind with massive rainfall. The last major floor ocurred on August 7th, 1959, caused more than a thousand dead or missing, 20 thousand house collapsed. The damage totalled 11% of GDP back then. Today, even with much better building standard and diaster preparation, Morakot still created major disruption to the whole country.