HUALIEN, Taiwan (Reuters) -Fourteen people have died in eastern Taiwan’s Hualien county after a barrier lake in the mountains overflowed and sent a wall of water into a town during a typhoon, the island’s fire department said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday night the government put the death toll at two with 30 others missing.
A fire department official said further details would be provided later in the morning.
The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the sparsely populated east of Taiwan, burst its banks mid-afternoon on Tuesday, sending a wall of water into Guangfu township.
Around 60% of the town’s 8,500 population, or some 5,200 people, opted for “vertical evacuation” – taking shelter on the higher floors of their own houses – while the majority of the rest left the area and stayed with their families, according to government data.
The government estimated the barrier lake contained 91 million tonnes of water, enough to fill some 36,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools and the equivalent of a major reservoir in southern Taiwan.
When the lake overflowed, around 60 million tonnes of water was released, the government said.
Taiwan has since Monday been lashed by the outer rim of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which is now on its way to the southern Chinese coast and financial hub of Hong Kong.
Taiwan logged around 70 cm (28 inches) of rainfall in its east due to the typhoon.
In 2009, Typhoon Morakot cut a swathe of destruction through southern Taiwan, killing about 700 people and causing damage of up to $3 billion.
(Reporting by Yimou Lee; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Christopher Cushing)
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