The 32-year-old, nine months pregnant, gathered her four children and scrambled to her elder brother's farming truck for cover.

"The rocks were raining down. They landed on the river before us as the water rushed upwards and burst through their gaps into numerous fountains," Hsieh told AFP.

The water level from the nearby river was rising, swallowing her home along with the rest of Meishan, a little-known, tiny village in Taiwan's southern Kaohsiung county.

"The electricity was gone. People started crying and running around."

But as the water rose, Hsieh knew the only way to save her children -- aged three to eight -- was to run to the top of the mountain.

"We were all running for our life," she recalled, still in shock a week after that fateful Saturday night.

By the time rescue workers found Hsieh's family and airlifted them to safety, the floods and mudslides unleashed by Typhoon Morakot had flattened her village and drowned acres of ginger and yam ready for harvest.

But hers was a rare, lucky case, she said, as most of her 100-member Meishan aboriginal tribe remained missing.

For days, Hsieh was among hundreds of survivors waiting anxiously at a school-turned rescue centre in neighbouring Chishan county for rescuers to bring back members of their clans on helicopters.

"I won't leave here until everyone from my tribe comes back safe," she said, lying on the ground with her belly bulging.

Hopes swell every time a helicopter can be heard approaching the school's sports field to land. Forced to stand at a distance, Hsieh and others desperately scan the faces emerging from the aircraft.

A system has evolved where rescue workers now hold up a placard identifying the village of the latest batch of arriving survivors.

Family members rush to be reunited with their loved ones and break down in tears of joy as emergency worker try to calm them.

Hsieh, like the others, has seen the scene unfold again and again but as she watches the displays of relief and happiness, her own fears deepen.

"The emotions are complicated. I'm really touched seeing other families reunited. But I'm also extremely disappointed when those who come back are not who I am looking for," she said.

A teary-eyed Chan Hsiao-ying, 26, said she had been waiting for five days hoping for the safe return of her 30 family members trapped in a village in Taoyuan.

She said she managed to speak to them by telephone a few days ago and knew that most of them -- including her one-year-old child -- were still alive.

"Helicopters touch down dozens of times everyday. And each time I was disappointed," she said.

"It's difficult to endure when you are disappointed so many times in one day. My family was running out of food and my child had had no milk for a week."

But some tried to stay upbeat. Chang Jing-cheng was on the phone with his brother-in-law when flash floods overturned the mango farmer's ploughing machine. Chang knew his relative was injured but was confident he would see him alive again.

Chang said a rescue team agreed to fly a helicopter Saturday morning to where his brother-in-law was trapped.

"I am sure he will still be there waiting for us. He will be there."

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