Wujia Tunnel

Taipower drove this tunnel through the flank of Wujiabengshan (五甲崩山) along the service road built for the Qilai Water Diversion Project (奇萊引水工程) in the upper Mugua River basin of Xiulin, Hualien. Work began in August 1978 and ran into repeated collapses in badly fractured rock, forcing a realignment that cut the planned length from 1,700 meters to 603 meters, delaying the completion of the tunnel to January 1981. A major landslide that June crushed the upper portal and some 300 meters of the tunnel, and although a lengthy replacement alignment was excavated, continued movement of the slope deformed and collapsed that too, severing the road link to the Linxi and Guixi dams upstream. Presumably the remains of the tunnel are now completely inaccessible.