There isn't any doubt that Taiwan is well prepared for Typhoon Parma, even though it may change course and spare the island anyway.
People of central and southern Taiwan hit hardest by Typhoon Morakot as well as those in the eastern counties of Hualien and Taitung are bracing for the latest tropical cyclone that is threatening to come up from Luzon.
Weather forecasters issued typhoon warnings early yesterday morning, despite not yet being able to predict how or when Typhoon Parma, which is slowing down in the South China Sea west of the Bashee Channel, will hit Taiwan.
But the people are prepared.
President Ma Ying-jeou is preparing them well for the typhoon, which is threatening Taiwan much like Typhoon Morakot, which struck on August 8-9, leaving in its wake more than 700 people dead and at least a third of the island under flood waters and mudslides.
In fact, Premier Wu Den-yih's administration has just started a reconstruction and rehabilitation project in the aftermath of the Flood Disaster of August 8.
Wu replaced Liu Chao-shiuan, who took responsibility for flip-flops in the handling of the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot.
Premier Wu, as well as his vice premier Chu Lih-lun and a few Cabinet ministers, will stay in disaster-prone counties in central, southern and eastern Taiwan, ready to provide any and all help should flash floods and landslides be triggered by Parma.
More than 31,000 troops, fully equipped, are deployed in strategic points on call to offer assistance, including search and rescue, if it is needed.
The premier and his Cabinet ministers seem to be very persuasive.
They have convinced many people in remote villages in the counties of Pingtung, Kaohsiung and Chiayi to begin evacuating after the typhoon warnings were announced at 5:30 a.m.
Most of the people understood Pingtung would once again take the brunt of the typhoon when it came. Indigenous tribes at Santimen moved out of their villages.
Helicopters carried indigenous residents away from their remote villages in Kaohsiung County, which along with Pingtung suffered the most devastation during the Morakot's onslaught.
Close to 500 people were buried alive in mudslides triggered by Morakot in the village of Hsiaolin in Kaohsiung County .
Most of those in tribal villages on Mount Ali were also evacuated to safety, though Parma has yet to hit. Many villages on the scenic mountain were destroyed by Morakot.
Fire brigades stand by in the counties of Taitung and Nantou to evacuate people from remote villages if precipitation rises over 50 millimeters.
All this is being done according to lessons learned by the government in the wake of the August 8 flood disaster, which also caused crop damages topping NT$2 billion.
When Morakot hit, the chain of command was short-circuited. No coordination was possible for timely search and rescues. Efforts to reopen blocked railroads and highways were also frustrated.
There shouldn't be a repetition of these same mistakes, President Ma warned. He went to a central disaster control center right after he completed a regular physical examination at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei on Friday, two days before typhoon warnings were sounded.
Ma called a hasty conference of concerned Cabinet ministers, where he assigned them jobs to see to it that there should be no repeat of August 8.
Parma may not hit Taiwan anyway. But the government and the people are jointly taking part in an exercise that trains them to cope successfully with disasters in the future.
（本文刊載於98.10.05 China Post，本文代表作者個人意見）