Supertyphoon Haitang - Taiwan  July 18  2005

At about 7pm Wednesday night I was travelling on highway 8 between Tayuling and Lishao, it was raining heavily and it was almost dark, a truck was about 50 metres in front of me when suddenly there was a big flash and the truck stopped suddenly, the driver running from his cab towards me waving frantically, a thundering roar was obvious inside the car above the sound of the car stereo, I thought he had crashed, but no, he was running from a huge mudflow which just seconds earlier had taken out the power lines, 200 metres of road and possibly a bridge. Grabbing the video I ran to the edge of the road to see a jet black wall of debris, huge trees and massive rocks smashing their way down a creek bed. The event was caught on video.... it is not known if any vehicles were swept away in the mudflow which appears to have been caused by some sort of blockage of a small stream which gave way all at once, emergency services have arrived at the scene, ps, timing is everything... I stopped a few minutes earlier to read a road map briefly...... Wed 20 July  2005

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