Chapter 8 Rescue with one hand and butcher knife with one hand
() The Americans landed in the Philippines, and the Taiwanese captured two American cruisers. Both sides were happy. Only the Spanish were empty-handed. Not only were the fleets sunk in the port by the Americans, but the city of Manila was also in danger. This old-style colonial government
Since then, the zhuist country has never stood up again and has become a third-rate country in Europe.
After receiving a secret report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the "Crayfish" operation, Liu Fu hid in his office and secretly had fun for a long time. The report mentioned that the U.S. Army and Navy were besieging Manila, and Liu Fu couldn't help but wonder whether he should go to the Americans again.
Add some chaos.
After thinking for an afternoon, Liu Fu decided not to attack again. He was afraid that if the Americans found out the clues, it would not end well. At that time, the old debt of ambushing the Japanese fleet three times in a row would be brought out, and Taiwan would bear it.
The pressure is too much.
Just as I suppressed my inner impulse, a piece of bad news came. According to a report received by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, floods occurred in parts of Changhua County, Taichung. Many villages were submerged by floods. The exact scale has not yet been estimated.
clear.
After reading the report, Liu Fu felt a headache. The external pressure had just eased, and something happened internally. It was really troublesome. But a headache is a headache, and what needs to be dealt with needs to be dealt with quickly. Taichung is Taiwan's important sugar and flax producer.
There are many sugar factories built in the production area. If the disaster relief is not timely, the crop production will be greatly reduced, seriously affecting the development of the local area and even Taiwan.
Liu Fu still knows a little bit about how to provide disaster relief and relies on local government.
Fu definitely won't work. It's too late to rely on state support. The fastest and most effective way is to use the army. So Liu Fu issued the first presidential order since taking office: dispatch the garrison near Changhua and rush to the disaster area to carry out the first wave of disaster relief.
And control the spread of the disaster. Then, Changhua County was telegraphed to quickly identify the disaster area and losses, cooperate with the army in epidemic prevention and resettlement of the affected residents, and report the specific number to the Ministry of Civil Affairs before deciding on subsequent post-disaster construction matters.
As soon as the presidential decree was issued, it immediately received support from all walks of life in Taiwan. In the past, during the Qing Dynasty, after a disaster, the homeless victims could only move to nearby towns on their own. It was normal for them to die of starvation and illness. It was lucky to be able to get to a city.
, you may not be able to enter the city, you can only wait outside the city for rich households to eat rice porridge or government offices.
Open the door and store grain in the warehouse. After receiving the relief grain, you can't wait for the next season's crop harvest, so you can only sell your children and daughters to sell yourself. What's even more terrifying is the plague after the disaster. Due to the mild and humid weather in Taiwan, the corpses of humans and animals will be
Failure to deal with it in time will pollute water sources and cause plagues of various sizes.
Although the new government has also introduced some measures that are opposed by people, such as cooperatives, bank loans, etc., these policies are only opposed by some relatively wealthy landowners, and the majority of the poor and the lower class of society are willing to accept them. This time the president
It announced the use of the army to provide disaster relief, provided temporary shelters to the victims, and uniformly distributed relief food. It was really much better than the Qing Dynasty.
After Liu Fu arranged the disaster relief work, he immediately called in the Minister of Internal Affairs Xu Zengliang. This Xu Zengliang was 21 years old. He was the oldest student in the former "stormtroopers" and the best student with various academic achievements. Because he had participated in many purges
Because he showed strong coordination and management skills during the suppression operation, Liu Fu appointed him as the minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, responsible for domestic and foreign intelligence, security and other work.
Liu Fu assigned Xu Zengliang another not-too-difficult job this time, which was to secretly dispatch a working group from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to integrate into various disaster relief links to check whether anyone had made national fortunes during the disaster relief and reconstruction work, and then sort out the work.
Submit the materials and report them directly to the President.
The disaster affected this time was the Ershui area in the southeast of Changhua County. This is the only place where the Changhua Plain leads to the Zhongyang Mountains. The entire area is very narrow and is sandwiched between Bagua Mountain and Zhuoshui Creek. Zhuoshui Creek
Originating in high mountain areas, the upper reaches have a large drop, and the stream is turbulent and large. In summer, when the rain is concentrated, the sand content of the stream is very high, causing serious siltation of the middle and lower reaches of the river, causing it to often migrate and change its course.
Heavy rains have continued in the mountainous areas this year, and the rivers have surged. The river course has changed to the north again, breaking through the original embankment and inundating dozens of nearby villages. The number of people affected by the disaster has exceeded 3,000.
Due to the rapid action of the army and timely follow-up measures, in addition to the more than 300 people who drowned in the flood, the victims who were forced to flee their hometowns did not continue to suffer. Instead, temporary shelters were set up nearby in Nantou, Yuanlin and other places.
In the shack.
The victims were centralized managed by the army, and rations, medicines, drinking water, etc. were distributed on time. Until the floods gradually dissipated, no large-scale epidemics or chaos occurred. With the help of the army, the victims who had been away from home for more than two months were
They returned to their hometowns one after another, and the local temporary relief points distributed food and seeds, and encouraged the victims to borrow interest-free loans from banks to survive the most difficult period after the disaster.
In more than two months, from June, when the disaster occurred, to August, when the floods receded and the victims returned home one after another, the army, local government, voluntary disaster relief people, and inspection teams from various government departments went from fighting independently to actively
Through cooperation, we not only completed the task of disaster relief and epidemic prevention, but also learned a lot of experiences and lessons.
Everything has two sides. When all the military and civilians in Taiwan were paying attention to the results of disaster relief, a secret report was placed on Liu Fu's desk. The report was submitted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the content of the report was about the disaster relief activities.
, several abnormal situations occurred. Those involved included officers and soldiers from the military department, local government staff and several local landlords. The highest-ranking one was a logistics officer from the Army Regiment Headquarters. He and the local government
Fu colluded with the landlords to resell the victims' rations, and then passed them off as good quality before distributing them to the victims. Others took the opportunity to spread rumors and slander the government, and there were also a few who gathered the victims to loot relief supplies. However, due to the timely discovery, the losses were not large.
Liu Fu had expected this result, so it was not surprising. Wherever there are people, there are these things. As for how to deal with it, Liu Fu thought about it for a long time, and finally decided that instead of executing them secretly, it would be better to shoot them publicly. Although these criminals
Most of them are Zheng Fu personnel. After the disclosure, it will have some impact on Zheng Fu's reputation. But who can make mistakes and correct them in time? The positive effects will offset the negative effects.
On August 20th, at a disaster relief performance meeting in Changhua County, 21 people who had committed various acts endangering the country and the people during the disaster relief were publicly pronounced and executed on the spot. All illegal gains were confiscated, and other non-serious parts of the case were sent to prison.
They went to the mines for labor reform, some received education, and were removed from public employment. Since then, the great flood of 1898 has come to a successful end.
Although the flood has passed and post-disaster reconstruction is in progress, the problem of lack of water conservancy facilities across Taiwan caused by this flood has been put on Liu Fu's desk again. Due to Taiwan's topography, most of the plains are around the island, and the island
Zhongyang is a large mountain range from south to north. Coupled with Taiwan's abundant rainfall, floods of varying scales occur every summer.
However, Taiwan's water conservancy facilities are very backward. There are no perfect reservoirs, and most of the dams in the mountains have been in disrepair for a long time. In order to fundamentally prevent large-scale water damage from happening in the future, Liu Fu transferred more than 100 people from central and local areas.
, the Ministry of Water Resources of Taiwan was established. It plans to build reservoirs on several major rivers and streams in the Zhongyang Mountains in the next few years.
Although the scale of the floods and disaster relief this time was not very large, the new government has performed outstandingly in caring for people's livelihood and combating corruption. This has won a lot of applause for the new government and the new president himself.
, Doubts about the government in Taiwan have gradually disappeared. In addition, there were no traitorous and humiliating actions in the previous negotiations with Britain, France and other countries, and the prestige of Taiwan's new government has been further enhanced.
