PINGTUNG, Taiwan: Taiwan was bracing for the likely return early Tuesday of Typhoon Tembin, forecasting that it may hit the same area where only days ago it unleashed the worst rains in more than a century.

It is rare in Taiwan for a typhoon to return and make a second landfall, happening roughly once in a decade, and local residents were anxious as they prepared for the eventuality late Monday.

"We're already hit by the worst flooding in a century," said Tsai Chun-fang, an official from the township of Hengchun, which saw more than 600 millimetres of rainfall within a 24-hour span late last week.

"We're really worried that the typhoon might return, because we haven't fully recovered yet."

Hundreds of soldiers were dispatched over the weekend to Hengchun, which forms the southernmost tip of the island, to help people clean up their homes after Tembin forced more than 8,000 people to evacuate their homes islandwide.

As of 1015 GMT on Monday, Tembin was 190 kilometres west-southwest of southern Taiwan, according to the Central Weather Bureau.