Fourteen people are dead in eastern Taiwan's Hualien county after a barrier lake in the mountains overflowed and sent a wall of water into a town during a typhoon.

On Tuesday night the government put the death toll from Super Typhoon Ragasa at two with 30 others missing and a fire department official said further details would be provided later on Wednesday.

The barrier lake, formed by landslides triggered by earlier heavy rain in the sparsely populated east of Taiwan, burst its banks mid-afternoon on Tuesday, sending a wall of water into Guangfu township.

The government estimated the barrier lake contained 91 million tonnes of water, enough to fill some 36,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools and the equivalent of a major reservoir in southern Taiwan.

When the lake overflowed, around 60

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