Just across the valley from Makazayazaya, where through flows the Ailiao River, the village of Kucapungane, populated by the indigenous Rukai people, was completely destroyed.ĭabu Lavakavu, a Paiwan guide who also left Makazayazaya behind, believes this was the land taking its revenge in a country struggling with human-generated land and air degradation.Īccording to the Environmental Performance Index, Taiwan ranks 140 out of 178 in exposure to PM2.5, toxic fine particulate matter, due to the rapid industrialisation the country has undergone in recent decades. The mountain, rich in the loose slate the Paiwan once made their homes from, was unstable following the heavy rains. In the days that followed, as the storm dissipated, they decamped to the school on the advice of government officials. Most in Makazayazaya hunkered down during the storm, riding it out, unable to leave as the rains and wind washed out the road and eviscerated the mountainside.
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Today, they are still trying to retake their ancestral home, as a lack of jobs in Rinari, lack of access to traditional farmlands, and a new town they feel culturally disconnected from leave the Paiwan alienated in their own homes.ĭue to lack of resources on their part and a lack of political will on the side of the government, they remain unable to return to their old village. None of those who left Makazayazaya in the days after Morakot knew then they would not set foot in their traditional homeland for over a decade.
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Most occur in sparsely populated areas of the mountains, such as the area around Makazayazaya and Rinari, and every year, lives are lost. Owing to Taiwan’s steep terrain and regular seismic activity, it is one of the most landslide-prone countries in the world. Between three and four typhoons on average strike Taiwan each year, causing billions of pounds worth of damages. Months later they were eventually moved to the nearby mountain village of Rinari, which is vulnerable to landslides and typhoons. “The government asked us to evacuate to the elementary school gym,” Hsieh told Climate Home News. The county government told them they were on their own, for now. Tung, along with Hsieh Wen-yen, head of the local Paiwan hunting association, were among those in charge of the village’s emergency evacuation procedures. They were left to evacuate on their own as Morakot dumped up to 2,500mm of rain on areas of the south, leaving behind their traditional farmlands and abandoning their ancestral burial grounds.
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Tung and some 500 members of the Paiwan indigenous group who populated Makazayazaya were lucky enough to survive the devastation. The storm washed out the road to the town, bringing huge swathes of mountainside sliding down to the valley below, taking with them over 600 lives, many of them in the mountains surrounding Makazayazaya in Pingtung and neighbouring Kaohsiung. One of the deadliest typhoons in Taiwan’s history, Typhoon Morakot, struck Taiwan and devastated his former home, the indigenous village of Makazayazaya, a thousand metres above sea level on the slopes of Baibin Mountain in Pingtung County. “We couldn’t be evacuated in time,” said Tung Wen-ming, community officer in the southern Taiwanese town of Rinari.