By Shin Hye-son Staff reporter
The torrential downpours, which have battered Korea beginning Friday, have left nearly 100 people dead or missing and caused huge property damage across the country, particularly in the southern parts.
The Natural Disaster Prevention Countermeasures Headquarters (NDPCH) announced yesterday that as of the afternoon, 20 people have been confirmed dead and 71 others declared missing in Kyongsang and Cholla provinces.
Due to the heavy rainfall, 55 people also have been displaced and some 36.2 billion won ($29 million) of property damage occurred from inundated farmland and destroyed roads, bridges and buildings.
The downpour ranged from 49.7mm to 267mm throughout the country, weathermen said.
The hardest hit was Sunchon County, South Cholla Province, which had 267mm of rainfall until 11 a.m. yesterday. And 231.9mm and 221mm have fallen in Chinju and Sanchong counties, both in South Kyongsang Province, respectively.
Most of the dead or missing were vacationers, who had camped out by the rivers and valleys of such areas as Mt. Chiri and Chinju, South Kyongsang Province.
Hundreds of other campers and mountain climbers are believed to be still stranded on Mt. Chiri by a sudden rise in water caused by the downpour. But the efforts to locate and rescue them had difficulty because of the continuing rain in the southern areas.
The NDPCH has so far saved 1,345 lives by mobilizing 1,579 rescue members, and 99 equipment and vehicles. Thousands of military forces and civilians also joined in the endeavor.
Anti-disaster officials analyzed that the killed or trapped vacationers didn't have enough time to escape the suddenly increased water, because the rain had fallen intensively over the night Friday.
For such a great casualty, the officials also blamed on weather forecasters' failure to issue warnings against heavy rain early enough.
Indeed, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) posted heavy-rain warnings for Sunchon, Kurye and Koksong counties in South Cholla Province at 10:30 p.m. Friday. But it was only after more than 100mm rain fell in Sunchon and Koksong between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.. Over the night, the areas around Mt. Chiri had up to 220mm of rainfall.
According to the KMA, 128mm of more rain fell in Sunchon between 11 p.m. and midnight, breaking the record of the heaviest precipitation per hour set Aug. 5 in 1942 in Seoul which had 118.5mm of rainfall.
As the administration declared last Tuesday that the annual rainy season for this year seemed to have been over, many people went on the camping and hiking without enough preparations for heavy rain and met the disaster.
In Sanchong County, South Kyongsang Province, near Mt. Chiri, the drowned bodies of Huh Tae-wan, 36, an unidentified 5-year old girl and three other people were discovered Saturday. Some 22 campers became missing from the area.
Sixty-six campers in all were compiled to have gone missing from the valleys of the mountain alone.
In Hapchon County, South Kyongsang Province, four family members were buried dead in their home by a landslide early yesterday morning.
The heavy rainfall has so far flooded at least 4,194 hectares of farmland and 106 houses, and destroyed 129 roads and bridges, anti-disaster officials said.