Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation

The foundation mobilized volunteers across Taiwan to help people hit by Typhoon Fanapi, which brought widespread flooding to the south of the island. They delivered more than 17,000 lunch boxes and 2,100 sets of relief kits. Fanapi was the most severe typhoon to hit the island this year, dropping 112 centimeters of rain, forcing the cancellation of domestic air and rail services and international flights from Kaohsiung and injuring 100 people.

The typhoon hit Hualien in eastern Taiwan on Sunday evening, with gusts of up to 220 kilometers per hour. The foundation set up 12 emergency centers across Taiwan to help those in need. Worst hit were Tainan in the southwest and Kaohsiung and Pingtung in the south. At five o’clock on Monday morning, the kitchen of the Jing Si (Still Thoughts) Hall in Kaohsiung was humming with activity as volunteers prepared food and relief kits, which content daily necessities. By midday, nearly 700 of them had spread out all over the city, delivering lunch boxes and bottles of mineral water and sets of relief kits.

The volunteers also helped people clean up their homes and the streets flooded with water, to enable them to resume their normal life as soon as possible. They also provided psychological help and support, especially to elderly people and those living alone, the most vulnerable at a time like this. Among the volunteers was Pan Weishi, an employee of China Telecom in Kaohsiung, who was given the day off work because of the typhoon; he used the time to help others.

Hualien, the home of the foundation, was also badly hit by the typhoon. It damaged the crops in Jing Si Abode. On Monday morning, Master Cheng Yen visited the foundation’s primary and secondary schools and College of Technology in the town to see the extent of the damage. The students young and old were cleaning up their schools and praised them for working with their own hands. She also visited the emergency centre set up in the Jing Si Hall in Hualien and spoke by video conference with volunteers in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. She reminded them that, while they should pay attention to their own safety, they should do all they could to help those in need after the typhoon.