Typhoon Spurs Big Mudslides in Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Searchers in Taiwan found mangled vehicle parts thought to be from a bus carrying 19 mainland Chinese tourists that disappeared when rains from Typhoon Megi caused huge mudslides on a mountainside highway, the transport minister said Saturday.

Landslides caused by the typhoon also killed nine people and buried a Buddhist temple in hardest-hit Ilan County in the northeast, where a record 45 inches of rain fell in 48 hours. Three other people drowned in their flooded homes, the Central Emergency Operations Center said.

The bus passengers were among 23 people still missing on the island after the typhoon, which killed 28 people in the Philippines earlier in the week.

Megi pounded Fujian Province in China with heavy rain on Saturday, but was downgraded to a strong tropical storm with winds of up to 67 miles per hour. Television news showed flooded streets, uprooted trees and swollen waterways, but there were no immediate reports of major damage.

The searchers found the bus parts “covered all over by thick mud” in a deep valley next to a coastal highway, said Taiwan’s transport minister, Mao Chih-kuo. Next to it was the wreckage of a second bus crushed by a huge boulder, but Chinese tourists on that bus were able to escape, Mr. Mao said.