When the Mountains Spill: Typhoon Fung-wong and the Quiet Violence of Rain
There is a particular hush that comes after a storm has passed: a velvet quiet punctuated by the distant whine of a chainsaw, the metallic clank of a backhoe, and the murmur of people reconciling with what the wind and water have taken. That hush has settled over villages in the Philippines and towns along Taiwan’s eastern coast in the wake of Typhoon Fung-wong — a storm that arrived angry, fast, and astonishingly wet.
On the battered island of Catanduanes, where coconut palms once lined roads like sentries, the first responders dug through ankle-deep mud, shovels flashing in the weary light. “We woke up to the sound of the mountains moving,” said one farmer, rubbing at his hands. “You can’t fight a landslide with hands alone.”
Human cost and the slow arithmetic of recovery
Philippine authorities now tally 18 confirmed deaths from Fung-wong — most of them the victims of landslides high in the Cordillera mountain chain — with two people missing and dozens injured. The storm displaced some 1.4 million people across the archipelago, turning low-slung dwellings into islands and filling village plazas with temporary shelters and the plastic flutter of tarpaulins.
“The greatest challenge for us right now is the restoration of lifelines — road clearing, restoration of power and communication lines — but we are working on it,” said Rafaelito Alejandro, deputy administrator of the national civil defence, speaking from a briefing. His tone was bureaucratic but exhausted; the tasks he described are the kind that measure months of slow, patient work in every disaster zone.
In the north, the Cagayan basin — one of the Philippines’ largest river systems — betrayed the people who live along its banks. A flash flood in nearby Apayao swelled the Chico River and then the Cagayan itself. Tuguegarao, a city of roughly 170,000 people about 30 kilometres from the river’s overflow, was left half-buried in water. More than 5,000 residents were evacuated before the worst of it, but many returned to soggy streets and ruined rice paddies.
Taiwan braces, evacuates, and waits
Across the Luzon Strait, Taiwan readied itself. Officials issued a land warning and moved 3,337 people out of harm’s way in four counties and cities, including Guangfu — the same town where flooding killed 18 people in Hualien just last September.
President Lai Ching-te took to social media with advice that was plain and stark: do not go into the mountains, stay away from the coast, and avoid beaches and other dangerous locations. Schools and government offices were closed in Hualien and neighbouring Yilan counties. In towns where the northeast monsoon met Fung-wong’s outer bands, meters of rainfall were forecast — up to 400 millimetres (nearly 16 inches) in 24 hours in some places.
Despite the alarm, Taiwan’s tech heartland remained largely unscathed: the northern city of Hsinchu — home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker — was not in the storm’s direct path. But that very fact underscores a global unease: in our interconnected world, a typhoon in one ocean basin can have supply-chain reverberations elsewhere, even as it decimates communities in another.
The mechanics of disaster — and what’s changing
Rescuers in the Philippines have been using backhoes and chainsaws to claw through mud and tree trunks, freeing villages that were cut off when slopes let go. In coastal towns like Tuao in Cagayan province, the image that lingers is of residents carrying what they can: a child, a chest of clothes, a small radio. One woman I spoke with in a temporary shelter said, “We brought only what fit in our arms. The rest was for the sea.”
Scientists say storms like Fung-wong are not acting in a vacuum. Warmer oceans and a thicker, moister atmosphere — signatures of human-driven climate change — are making tropical cyclones more prone to rapid intensification and heavier rainfall. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and regional studies have warned that while the total number of tropical cyclones may not dramatically increase, the proportion of the most intense storms and the volume of rain they carry are on the rise.
“We’re seeing a higher frequency of sudden strength changes in storms,” said Dr. Mei-Ling Chen, a climate scientist at National Taiwan University. “When sea-surface temperatures are above normal, storms can feed like a wildfire on petrol — and the immediate consequence is more water dumped where people live.”
Local color, local pain
Traveling from Tuguegarao to the foothills, the landscape changes: terraced rice paddies, banana groves slumped under rain, and corrugated roofs patched with tarpaulin. The smell is of wet earth and diesel. On the ferry to Catanduanes, fishermen mopped decks and checked nets, their faces lined by salt and wind. “We fish when the sea calms,” one deckhand told me. “We cannot fish if the boats are gone.”
In small barangays — Philippine villages where community life is woven tight — the old women who organize the local kitchens became instant coordinators of charity, doling out bowls of rice, cups of coffee, and the kind of steady encouragement that does not make headlines but keeps people upright.
What recovery will look like — and why it matters to all of us
Officials warn that even “early recovery” will take weeks. On Catanduanes, broken water systems could take up to 20 days to fix; power and communication outages will complicate logistics and slow the arrival of outside aid. The arithmetic of rebuilding — roads, schools, irrigation channels — is heavy on time and money.
But there is another arithmetic here, one that adds up community memory, indigenous knowledge, and adaptation. In the Cordilleras, decades of terrace farming and local warning signs saved lives where modern infrastructure failed. In Taiwan, early evacuation orders and a relatively robust disaster-response apparatus will limit loss of life if people heed the calls to stay safe.
So what does this mean for a global audience watching satellite images and scrolling through news feeds? It means that climate vulnerability is neither abstract nor distant. It shows how the accumulation of heat in the world’s oceans translates into immediate human consequences: landslides in the Philippines, flooded towns in Taiwan, lost livelihoods, and months of recovery.
It also asks hard questions about investment priorities. Are we putting enough into resilient infrastructure in the places that need it most? Are international aid and local governance aligned to move faster, not just in the chaotic hours after a storm, but in the slow work of making communities more flood- and storm-resistant?
“We will rebuild,” said a barangay captain in a makeshift shelter, folding his hands as if to steady himself. “It is the only thing we know how to do.”
As Fung-wong pushes back out to sea and the rescue crews keep searching for missing people, the aftermath will be a test of patience, solidarity, and political will. Will richer countries and tech-dependent economies recognize that the safety of their supply chains, and the lives of fishermen and farmers, are bound together in one climate-stressed world?
When the last tarp is replaced and the roads are swept clean, the real work begins: redesigning coasts, bolstering mountain slope management, investing in early-warning networks, and listening to the people who know the land by touch and memory. Until then, the chainsaws will hum, the backhoes will dig, and communities will, as they always have, carry one another through the rain.
