Seven cars crashed into swollen Chuoshui River

She was by the riverside, where the bridge with its foundation washed bare collapsed on Sunday, plunging seven cars into the torrents. Aboard one of the cars was her son Hsieh Yao-chi.

Mrs. Hsieh went to the riverside early yesterday morning to perform a spirit calling, hoping that her missing son would miraculously came back to her.

The car that carried Hsieh wasn't found.

Another was discovered a kilometer away from the collapsed bridge, the one on Highway 16 linking Chichi with Shuili in the land-locked county of Nantou in central Taiwan.

On a leisure car, the first of the seven found, was its driver Liu Wen-yu, of Chichi.

His body was found on the driver's seat.

The three passengers Liu carried were brothers, said their mother who joined Mrs. Hsieh in calling their beloved to come back home unscathed.

She didn't want to let their names be known. Doing so, she believes, will condemn her sons to death. She could only sob.

Still another car, a Mercedes Benz, was also recovered further down the river.

Police did not identify the driver and two passengers. None of them were found aboard the luxury car recovered.

The accident occurred at 4 a.m., police investigators said.

It was dark, and the visibility was very poor, investigators said.

They were totally unaware that the western end of the bridge was a huge pit. That part of the bridge was washed away in the flash floods triggered by the record-breaking downpours triggered by Typhoon Morakot.

"None of the drivers could pull their cars to a screeching halt," said a Chichi police lieutenant. "They piled into the black hole one by one," he added.

Four of them were known to have fallen on Sunday, with seven aboard, though none of them were found.

Among the missing were a father and a daughter, and a clothes dealer, who was identified as Hsieh Yao-chi.

A seventh car missing was reported yesterday afternoon.

The driver was identified as Shih Chun-hao, of Hsinyi, the lieutenant said. His brother Chun-chieh and a girlfriend, Chuan Hsin-yin, were passengers.

"So far," the police lieutenant said, "we have found out seven cars plunged into the river. One driver was found dead, with 13 others still missing."

He said he hopes no one would report any more missing cars, swallowed by the river Chuoshui, which means Unclear Water.

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