Typhoon Gaemi Brings Extreme Rainfall, Flooding to Kaohsiung

Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan has seen some of the worst flooding from Typhoon Gaemi.

Transcript

00:00Torrential downpours continue in southern and central Taiwan, including Kaohsiung,

00:04where Louise Wat joins us now. Louise, what are the conditions like there?

00:09Taiwan has been seeing extreme rain, and particularly here in Taiwan's largest city

00:16in the south. Now, Kaohsiung has seen more than 1.6 meters of rainfall within the past three days.

00:24And some of the worst flooding as well, as you can imagine. I'm in Sanmin District,

00:29which is Kaohsiung's most populated district, and this road was flooded up to knee level. Now,

00:37most of it has receded now, but residents told me earlier that there are still hundreds of homes

00:42without power, and this is almost 24 hours since they first lost power. And there's a residential

00:49compound building on the road behind me, and that basement is still flooded. There are three

00:55floors of a car park, and it's still filled with water. So the hundreds of vehicles that are in

01:01there are basically, there's no getting them out. And there's an army truck trying to do what it

01:07can to pump water out, but I think it's going to be there for a while. Now, Kaohsiung's mayor

01:12says the city is experiencing the worst flooding since 1988. Taiwan's president even visited the

01:20city earlier today. He went to Meinong District, which itself has seen more than one meter of

01:26rainfall. And he vowed that the government would do more work to better combat heavy rainfall

01:32and improve infrastructure. Now, it's not clear what the details will be, and the residents who

01:39are here, the residents who have been cleaning up after the floods,

01:43will be waiting to hear what those details are in the coming days and weeks.