Taiwan prepares national search-and-rescue team after Nepal-Tibet flood

Taiwan has prepared its national search-and-rescue team to travel to Nepal, officials said yesterday, a day after a catastrophic and deadly torrent of water and mud several stories high swept through communities along the Nepal-China border following a glacier collapse.

The government on Wednesday ordered the national special search-and-rescue team and rotating units from Tainan, Hsinchu City and Chiayi County to prepare for departure, National Fire Agency Director-General Hsiao Huang-chang (蕭煥章) said.

Although Taiwan has yet to receive a request for help, the national special rescue-and-research team would respond swiftly, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to requests for rescue operations from affected countries, he told a news conference following the weekly Cabinet meeting.

At least 359 people were killed, local media reported, and more than 1,300 are missing, including scores of foreigners and pilgrims. Hundreds others have been displaced across the Himalayan region.

The Mainland Affairs Council late on Wednesday said it was seeking information on the safety of 51 Taiwanese nationals registered as being in Tibet.

It asked the Straits Exchange Foundation to use available “channels” to check on the safety of Taiwanese in the affected area, without specifying what those channels were.

Images showed what appeared to be the second floors of buildings in Nepal’s hard-hit Nuwakot District slathered in mud after the torrent rushed by. Debris hung from tree branches and wires, vehicles were buried and some stunned survivors were caked in mud.

Nepalese Minister of Home Affairs Sudhan Gurung said the focus remained on finding survivors as rescue teams located 100 missing Indian visitors, mostly pilgrims, and 25 Chinese workers in the worst-hit region around Trishuli.

More than 650 foreigners were still unaccounted for while Nepalese authorities were yet to determine the number of locals missing.

The Red Cross said that entire villages had been destroyed and impassable roads and bridges had left communities cut off, adding that the full scale of the disaster remains unclear.

“It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us,” said Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor being treated in a Nepalese hospital.

“As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher. When I saw it enter our home, I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take her to the terrace, but she was swept away by the mud.”

A helicopter ferried him to safety four hours later.

“My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud,” he added. “She’s gone.”

The tally of missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County was 558, the state-run China Central Television said, including 260 foreign nationals.

China said the death toll stayed at three.

The missing foreigners in Nepal belonged to more than two dozen countries, including 288 from India, 63 from the US, 51 from Malaysia, 34 from Australia, 33 from the UK and 25 from Canada.

Early reports from Nepalese officials suggested an earthquake in the area could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger the floods.

The US Geological Survey said an earthquake with magnitude initially reported as 4.4 was in fact seismic energy generated by the collapse of glacial rock and ice, followed by debris flow.

Chinese authorities have identified risks from a still-dammed lake in Gyirong, upstream from the mudslide and flood-stricken Tibet-Nepal border crossing that could complicate rescue efforts, particularly as rains are forecast, China Central Television said.

Yesterday morning, the dammed lake was estimated at 2 million cubic meters in volume and was already overflowing, state media said citing the Chinese water resources ministry.

A fire and subsequent explosion in a residential area in Tainan early yesterday injured 15 people and damaged 68 homes, the Tainan City Fire Bureau said. The bureau said it received a report at 1:12am yesterday that a pile of waste in a vacant lot in Annan District’s (安南) Haidian Road had caught fire and exploded, adding that it dispatched 144 firefighters and 53 firetrucks to battle the blaze and evacuate nearby residents.

It took more than four hours to extinguish the fire, it said. The incident damaged 11 privately owned vehicles, as well as eight fire engines, one ambulance and two disaster

DELUGE: The Tainan City Government requested five mobile water pumps from the central government to supplement the 511 pumps it had already prepared Torrential rain caused by the combined effects of southwesterly winds and a low-pressure belt battered southern Taiwan yesterday, causing widespread flooding across Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County. More than 2,300 people were evacuated as authorities warned of continued heavy rain through tomorrow.

Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County yesterday announced that work and classes would remain suspended today for the second consecutive day amid heavy rain and flooding. Chiayi, Hualien and Taitung counties later last night also announced that work and classes would be canceled today. The Kaohsiung City Government said it expected cumulative rainfall over the five-day period of the low-pressure system to

A US Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace on Friday, in a move the US 7th Fleet said “demonstrates the US’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” The Chinese military tracked and monitored the patrol and reconnaissance aircraft throughout the transit, the state-backed Global Times newspaper reported, citing a military source, saying the “situation was under control.”

US military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates Taiwan from China every few months. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is expected to visit the US next month to meet US President Donald Trump as Washington

‘ALARMING’: Many of the officers being investigated were rising military stars, with good service records and grades in the military academy, anonymous sources said Law enforcement officials have broadened a probe into a suspected network of Chinese spies, after the Kaohsiung branch of the High Court on Wednesday convicted two former military service members on espionage and corruption charges. The court sentenced an ex-army sergeant surnamed Fang (方) to 10 years and four months in prison and an ex-air force sergeant surnamed Huang (黃) to seven years in prison.

The verdict may be appealed. Fang and Huang were found guilty of passing military secrets to China and attempting to turn their colleagues into Chinese spies as members of Wo Long Hui (臥龍會, “Crouching Dragon Society”), an