14 killed by lake burst in Taiwan as Super Typhoon Ragasa wreaks havoc

**14 Killed by Lake Burst in Taiwan as Super Typhoon Ragasa Wreaks Havoc**

As Malta basked in its final weeks of summer sunshine this week, the western Pacific island of Taiwan was being torn apart by Super Typhoon Ragasa, whose record-breaking rainfall burst a mountain lake and killed at least 14 people. The tragedy, unfolding half a world away, carries uncomfortable echoes for Maltese who still remember the 1979 Għargħur flash-flood that swept cars into the sea and the 2010 Ħaż-Żabbar tornado that shredded greenhouses. Climate scientists warn that the same warming Mediterranean that makes our summers hotter is also fuelling stronger typhoons in Asia—meaning Ragasa’s devastation is not “foreign news” but a postcard from Malta’s own possible future.

Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration recorded 1,162 mm of rain in 24 hours at Sandimen township—more than Malta’s average annual rainfall—overwhelming the Laonong River and bursting the natural dam of a volcanic crater lake above the village of Kucapung. A 30-metre wall of water roared downhill at 3 a.m. on Tuesday, ripping concrete bridges in half and burying bamboo hamlets under ten metres of mud. Rescue teams in orange overalls the colour of Malta’s civil-protection jackets used sniffer dogs and heat-detecting drones to pull survivors from debris; by Thursday afternoon 14 bodies had been recovered, six people remained missing and 370 were housed in school gyms turned emergency shelters.

For a Maltese reader the numbers feel eerily familiar: 14 dead is the same toll as the 1988 Gozo ferry disaster that still haunts national memory, while 370 evacuated equals almost every inhabitant of Għasri. “We watched the drone footage and saw rooftops poking out of mud like the Għargħur church spire after the 1979 storm,” said Marisa Falzon, a University of Malta geographer who specialises in Mediterranean cloudbursts. “The difference is scale: Taiwan’s mountains rise to 4,000 m, so gravity turns rain into bullets. Malta’s limestone plateaus are lower, but our clay-layer valleys can funnel flash floods just as brutally—remember Msida 2018?”

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te cancelled National Day rehearsals and deployed 6,500 soldiers; Malta’s embassy in Beijing—which also covers Taipei—has opened an emergency line for Maltese citizens believed to be teaching English or studying Mandarin on the island. Only eight Maltese passport-holders are registered, all safe, but the honorary consul in Taipei, Dr Michael Borg, told Hot Malta that two Gozitan backpackers had been hiking in the Maolin valley when the lake burst. “They heard what sounded like a low-flying aircraft and ran uphill,” Borg said. “They lost their passports in the mud but reached a police station; we’re issuing emergency travel docs.”

Local cultural parallels run deeper than geography. Taiwan’s indigenous Paiwan tribe lost three ancestral homes in Kucapung; their carved wooden posts, painted with hundred-pacer snakes, now lie splintered like the limestone niches of Malta’s flooded cemeteries. “Both cultures mourn the loss of place, not just life,” said Prof. George Cassar, who teaches comparative heritage studies. “When Ragasa erases a Paiwan village it is like losing a wayside chapel—memory is washed away.” Maltese NGOs are already mobilising: the Malta-Taiwan Friendship Society will screen a fund-raising documentary at Spazju Kreattiv on 12 October, and Pastizzi Project food-truck owners have pledged one day’s sales to relief efforts.

Meteorologists note that Ragasa’s rapid intensification—from tropical storm to Category-5 in 36 hours—was fed by sea-surface temperatures 1.2 °C above average, the same anomaly measured last August off Malta’s Mellieħa buoy. “A warmer Med won’t produce typhoons, but it will give us medicanes with similar cloudbursts,” said Dr Charles Galdies of the Institute of Earth Systems. “Ragasa is a reminder that drainage plans for Qormi, Msida and Birkirkara are not just infrastructure projects; they are life-saving defences.”

Back in Taiwan, rescuers continue to dig. Among the debris they found a children’s choir T-shirt bearing the word “Hope” in English and Mandarin. Someone had folded it carefully and placed it on a rock, a small Maltese-like gesture of resilience against the storm.