Killer storm triggers landslides

2008-07-18 11:45

Taipei - Tropical storm Kalmaegi lashed southern Taiwan with torrential rains on Friday, triggering flash floods and landslides.

Rampaging waters killed at least seven people and washed six others away.

Television footage showed water pouring down a mountain road, flooding a large area of Kaohsiung county in southern Taiwan. The Disaster Relief Centre said a woman was rescued from a house buried in a landslide, but her one-year-old daughter and a brother died.

A soldier was killed after falling into a drainage ditch in Taichung, central Taiwan, the centre said.

Four people drowned and four others were washed away by flood waters in Kaohsiung and Tainan, also in southern Taiwan, the centre said.

A man and a woman were missing after the police motorboat that rescued them from their home overturned in flood waters in Tainan county, it said. Three rescuers were pulled from the waters unharmed, it said.

Water supplies were cut in the county for more than 650 000 households because of flooding, officials said.

Television showed firefighters using ladders to rescue several people trapped in a flooded house in coastal Yunlin county, and several drivers being rescued after hollering for help on top of their trucks on a flooded freeway in Taichung.

Officials said parts of the south had recorded up to 112cm of rain in the past 24 hours.

The storm started lashing Taiwan late on Thursday. It headed away from Taiwan and toward southern China early on Friday, packing winds of 84km/h, the Central Weather Bureau said.

In the Philippines, the government disaster agency said two people died earlier this week as the storm pounded the country's northern corner with rain and strong winds.

Kalmaegi is the Korean word for seagull.

- AP