Typhoon Relief

Many of you have asked me repeatedly how affected I have been by the typhoon. When I mentioned our typhoon experience last weekend, I mentioned how it had not impressed us as much more than an extremely heavy thunderstorm. It is amazing how what to us was merely a lot of wind and rain created so much devastation less than an hour away from us. We live in Kaohsiung City, which experienced very little damage. The flooding and mudslides which have made international news occurred farther out in Kaohsiung County as well as in the counties of Pingtung, Taitung and Chiayi.

Typhoon Morakot was the worst typhoon to hit Taiwan in the last 50 years, dumping over six feet of rain over a 2-3 day period. 121 deaths have been confirmed so far, with that number expected to surpass 500 soon. Another 1300 people are still reported trapped in remote mountainous villages. Washed out bridges and roads have made rescue missions near to impossible, except by helicopters. Taiwan is currently employing 75 helicopters, and has petitioned for more from the US and Canada. Check out this site for pictures of the devastation:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/typhoon_morakot.html


All of us ETAs are obviously concerned about the situation and have begun looking for ways we can help. Today, we went down to the City Hall to help with packing donations, sorting clothes and loading boxes onto buses to be sent out to the various provinces, where they will then be air-lifted in to the victims. We were impressed by the amount of the donations there, which were all given by local residents. Additionally, the building was filled with volunteers from the city who had all turned out to help. However, with about twice as many volunteers as needed, we did not feel super useful, but we were still happy to help in whatever way we could. Three ETAs from Yilan even made the train-ride down here to go volunteer with us.


Carol (far left) and I attempted to make ourselves useful by joining a group of Taiwanese women folding clothes. What we could not figure out was why we were pulling clothes out of bags, unfolding them, shaking them and then refolding them. But always being happy to help, we went along with it. And then we figured out that we were not supposed to be *folding* but *sorting*... Ah the joys of operating in your non-native language... Indeed, I was rather dismayed by how little I could understand of their conversation, so we finally called Kristin (second from the left) over to help translate. And wouldn't you know it: they were not even speaking Mandarin! Sadly, I know no Taiwanese, but luckily Kristin knows both. At least it made me feel slightly better for being so confused... slightly...