More Aftermath

Here is an article from the Taipei Times about the aftermath of this biggest typhoon.  You should check it out; there are some cool pictures.

So my dad asked:  Why does Taiwan get all the typhoons?  This is a good question.  One answer is, it doesn't; lots of them go to Japan or the Philippines or, um, other countries.  This year has been weird in having so many serious ones.  Also there's been criticism because typhoon days weren't called until very late for the first one and a lot of people died because I guess they just didn't take it seriously.  So maybe they are just erring on the side of caution to always call typhoon days, but maybe not, I don't know.  But I'm sure there's also a meteorological explanation for why Taiwan gets pounded while that huge land mass to our west largely escapes them.

Also interesting:  Taichung is supposedly screened somewhat from typhoons because we've got mountains to the east and a huge plateau between Taichung and the Taiwan Strait to the west.  And it's true, the strongest winds are generally along the east coast.

But by far the most people have died from typhoons in Taichung county this year.  A lot of those people were in the first one, in a town called TaiPing right next to Taichung city.  It means "too flat" so you can imagine why flooding was a problem.  The collapsed bridge added some.  I'm not sure if this a factor but landslides are rampant everywhere, and the fact that Taichung county has both so many mountains and so many people might mean that there's more of a chance of getting killed by one  here.  But this last typhoon the only 2 deaths were in Taichung county for none of those reasons- one was an old man walking along a rice paddy, and the wind blew him into it and he drowned; the other was a girl driving her scooter when a TV cable hit her.  So that totally justifies my not leaving my apartment during typhoons.