Typhoon Champi closes schools and offices across most of Taiwan

Schools and offices across most of Taiwan closed on Friday, 23 October, as Typhoon Champi brought strong winds and heavy rain. Financial markets shut too, and hundreds of flights were cancelled. Dawn reported that one person had been killed and 171 injured, with more than 2,600 people evacuated from mountainous areas.

Champi was weakening, but Taiwan’s weather agency said a direct landfall was still possible. Its wind radius was about 320 kilometres, enough to cover most of Taiwan. Nearly a metre of rain was forecast for northern mountain areas. In Yilan, in the northeast, authorities distributed sandbags and readied inflatable rescue boats and vehicles that can travel on both land and water.

I hope as many of those boats as possible end up being put away unused. I’m glad they’re ready. A rescue is easy to tell a story about: someone is stranded, a boat reaches them, they get out. Having the boat available beforehand is much less dramatic, and it may never produce a story at all.

That’s the part I want to give more attention to. If a neighbourhood avoids flooding, the decision to have equipment nearby doesn’t become foolish afterwards. People had to prepare while they still didn’t know how bad it would get. I’d rather read about the slow business of packing up than need a heroic ending.