Soldiers searched typhoon-devastated areas for survivors and bodies on Monday as more than 1 600 people waited to be airlifted to safety nine days after Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan.
The official death toll rose to 126, but President Ma Ying-jeou has warned the number could climb to more than 500, with hundreds feared buried.
About 40 000 troops began a new phase of the rescue operation, shifting their focus from evacuations to combing remote areas, said Transport Minister Mao Chih-kuo, who is leading the emergency response.
A total of 1 638 people were waiting to be airlifted from 44 severely damaged villages, Mao told a news conference on Sunday night.
It could take up to six months to rebuild roads and bridges in typhoon-hit areas, making it hard for people to live in some remote villages in the meantime, he added.
And those refusing to leave such areas may have to be removed by force, he said.
”One could hardly imagine the cost if those people continue to stay on the mountains and all of their daily needs have to be airlifted,” he said.
The typhoon has turned into a political storm for Taiwan’s president who acknowledged widespread public anger over the weekend by apologising to survivors for failing to recognise the scale of the crisis in time.
”I will take full responsibility whatever the blame is. After all, I’m the president of this country,” Ma told CNN on Sunday.
As relatives took it upon themselves to search for loved ones, the Transport Ministry blocked roads in five seriously affected counties to prevent the public from disrupting rescue efforts.
Aid from around the world poured in with a five-member European Union delegation expected to arrive on Monday to determine how the EU could best help, the Foreign Ministry said.
A second United States military C-130 transport aircraft landed in southern Taiwan just after midday on Monday, delivering water purification tablets, the Defence Ministry said.
The first flight arrived on Sunday, marking the first US military activity in Taiwan since 1979, when troops based here left because Washington shifted its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
The US was also sending two heavy-lift military helicopters to Taiwan to help in evacuation efforts, Mao said.
The helicopters, each being capable of carrying up to 16 tonnes, can be used to airlift excavators and bulldozers to the mountainous areas that mudslides have left inaccessible by road, Taiwanese media said.
Beijing has also offered large helicopters used during last year’s earthquake in China, but Taipei declined the offer due to national security concerns, the United Daily News reported, citing unnamed defense officials.
Port authorities in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao said 22 local seamen were missing in waters off Taiwan following the typhoon, the official Xinhua news agency said.
A search for the men — who were working on a Panama-registered freighter en route from Indonesia to Taiwan — was ongoing, the report said.
Typhoon Morakot slammed into Taiwan on August 8, dumping more than three metres of rain that unleashed floods and mudslides which tore through houses and buildings, ripped up roads and smashed bridges.
It was the worst-ever typhoon to strike Taiwan, the president said on Friday, saying the scale of the damage was more severe than a 1959 typhoon that killed 667 people and left about 1 000 missing.
Meanwhile, a 6,7-magnitude quake jolted the ocean floor off Taiwan’s east coast at 8.06am (00.06GMT) and was felt in the south where rescue operations were under way, but there were no immediate reports of damage, the Central Weather Bureau said. — AFP
