Trains packed with volunteers arrive at tourist town of Guangfu, days after typhoon sent millions of tonnes of mud and water crashing through its streets
They arrived by train, car and motorbike, in boots and bucket hats and carrying shovels.
Students, monks, and retirees. Gym bros, migrant workers, mums and dads with their children, even tourists. As a crowd of hundreds disembarks from the train a crowd of people cheer “jiayou”, a chant of encouragement which translates to “add oil”.
Dubbed the “shovel supermen”, they have come to Guangfu in their tens of thousands, as volunteers ready to help after a distant typhoon burst a natural dam and sent millions of tonnes of water, mud and silt crashing through the streets.
This small town in Hualien, a picturesque county on Taiwan’s east coast had long been a magnet for tourists, before disaster had struck a week ago. The outer bands of 2025’s strongest typhoon, Ragasa, dumped torrential rain on the region, and last Tuesday afternoon it burst a precarious barrier lake in the Matai’an river. The lake, formed by a landslide in July, had been under constant monitoring and authorities had expected it would overflow, but it exceeded expectations. More than 15.4m tonnes of water came down, blasting a tsunami of thick sludge into Guangfu. At least 18 people died.
