Barrier lake burst kills 14, leaves 152 missing in Taiwan

TAIPEI: At least 14 people were killed when a decades-old lake barrier burst in Taiwan, a government official said Wednesday, after Super Typhoon Ragasa pounded the island with torrential rain.

The lake in eastern Hualien county — formed by series of landslides that created a natural dam wall — burst Tuesday, washing away a bridge and sweeping into a town with a trail of thick sludge and mud.

"It was like a volcano erupting [...] the muddy floodwaters came roaring straight into the first floor of my house," Hsu Cheng-hsiung, 55, a neighbourhood leader of Kuang Fu township, told AFP.

Lee Kuan-ting, a Hualien County Government press official, said 14 people were killed and 18 injured.

Premier Cho Jung-tai visited the area Wednesday, pledging to provide assistance to those affected.

"As for the 14 people who lost their lives, we must find out why evacuation orders were not carried out in the affected area, leading to such a tragedy," he said.

"We still have more than a hundred people missing and this is our greatest concern right now."

According to the National Fire Agency, at least 152 people are missing in Hualien and elsewhere in Taiwan.

"It was a disaster movie," a local resident Yen Shau, 31, told AFP.

He said an hour before the lake burst, many people were still at the local supermarket and grocery store.

"Within minutes, the water had risen to halfway up the first floor," he said.

He said he couldn't sleep Tuesday night for fear of another deluge from the lake, and on Wednesday was shovelling mud from his home.

"The mud was just too deep, too deep to dig out," he added.

Footage released by the fire agency showed flooded streets, half-submerged cars and uprooted trees.

Across Taiwan, more than 7,600 people were evacuated due to Typhoon Ragasa. The country experiences frequent tropical storms from July to October.

Typhoon Danas, which hit the island in early July, killed two people and injured hundreds as the storm dumped more than 50 centimetres of rain across the south over a weekend.