英伦广角 2009-08-23 台湾灾民避难（在线收听）

Thousands of evacuees took refuge in churches and temples in southern Taiwan on Monday, waiting for road repair that would allow a return to their homes. Some fear that could take months or years due to the state of the roads damaged by massive landslides triggered by the worst typhoon to hit the island since 1959.

The official death toll from the August 8th typhoon Morakot stands at 123, but Taiwan President Ma estimates that it now exceeds 500 people. More than 35，000 people in the disaster areas have been rescued, but thousands more remain stranded in the mountains over a week later.

 Hung Hu-chieh was evacuated from his village by a helicopter on Sunday.

When the incident happened, there was no choice. All of our chickens, sheep were there. We didn't have time to think, and we don't have any chance to go back and take care of them.

 Ch'iang Feng-mei who had been in the shelter for two days just wanted to go home.

We still want to go home. We don't want to have them always give us food to eat and clothes to wear. We don't want that. As soon as the road is fixed we will go home and see if our house is still there or not.

 In Alishan over 200 volunteers carried food baskets on their backs which they planned to delivered to fellow villagers still in the mountains. Foreign aid began to arrive in Taiwan on Monday after leaders apologized for initially refusing the offers. Six countries including the United States have pledged aid including expert damage assessment and water filtration tools. Chinese donors have given over 18 million dollars and a cargo ship loaded with aid is due to leave Shenzhen port on Monday for Taiwan.

 Puja Bharwani, Reuters