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Ahead of Typhoon Fung-wong’s arrival on Wednesday, more than 8,300 residents in Taiwan were evacuated. The storm, now significantly weakened, brought heavy rains to the mountainous eastern coastline, causing severe flooding stretching in some areas up to waist-high.
Most businesses and schools in the southern regions of the island shut their doors, with 51 individuals reported injured. Live footage showed extreme flooding in parts of Yilan County, an area predominantly rural, where waters reached neck level, prompting rescue teams—including soldiers—to conduct efforts for stranded residents.
Fisherman Hung Chun-yi recounted, “The water entered so rapidly.” He spent the night removing mud from his home in Suao, an eastern harbor town, after floodwaters on the first floor reached depths of about two feet. “It rained so intensely and so quickly that the drainage system couldn’t keep up.”
The fire department reported that about 8,300 people had been relocated to safer areas, mainly within Yilan and the neighboring Hualien regions, as a late-season typhoon and a monsoon from the north exacerbated rainfall. Yilan’s town of Dongshan recorded 794 mm (approximately 31 inches) of rain on Tuesday, according to weather officials.
Fung-wong is expected to brush past Taiwan’s southern tip later today before moving out into the Pacific Ocean. The storm lost much of its strength after passing through the Philippines, where it claimed 18 lives, and a September typhoon caused similar destructive floods in Hualien, killing 18 people.
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