Seoul Floods - 19 Dead

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Daegu, South Korea

This is shocking considering there is NO RAIN in Daegu!!

Seoul has been getting hammered by massive storms since the end of June so the ground is completely saturated. The rain path comes from the China Sea into the central korean peninsula (Seoul), then into North Korea, so Daegu in the south only gets passing drizzle at best. We are lucky! The death toll is now 38 since the article was written.

See the Rainfall Map - Daegu is in the lighter area

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Taken from The Korea Herald - Jul 27, 2011

At least 19 people were killed Wednesday as two days of torrential rains triggered landslides, flooding and power outages in Seoul and central regions, emergency officials said.

As of 3 p.m., five others had been reported missing, the nation’s disaster control agency said.

“The death toll could rise, as more reports are coming in,” an official there said.

Han River Bursts Banks

In Chuncheon, some 85 kilometers east of Seoul, 13 people died after a landslide destroyed a mountain pension and three residential buildings just after midnight Wednesday. Twenty others were injured, with four of them in critical conditions.

The victims were mostly students from Inha University in Incheon, who were in the area for volunteer work during their summer vacation, emergency officials said.

“I was sleeping on the second floor of the pension when I heard the thunderous sound of a landslide. The stairs collapsed and I was buried in mud,” one student rescued by firefighters told the Yonhap news agency.

In Seoul, which recorded nearly 400 millimeters of precipitation from Tuesday till early Wednesday, tons of mud from Mount Woomyeon swept through a village in the city’s southern ward of Seocho, killing at least five and leaving one missing.

About 20 houses in the Jeonwon Village were buried under mud, rescuers said.

Seoul Streets Flooded

The landslide also hit another village, Hyeongchon, leaving at least two dead. Among the victims was Yang Myeong-ja, the wife of Shinsegae chairman Koo Hak-su, She was killed while trying to check the basement of her home in the village.

Police, firefighters and public servants were carrying out rescue efforts, as half of the village, or 60 houses, were still isolated.

On top of the casualties from landslides, at least three people were reported missing in flooded streams and rivers, emergency officials said.

More than 700 houses and hundreds of cars were submerged across the nation.

Roads, streets, subway stations and residential districts were flooded in Seoul and elsewhere. Hundreds of traffic lights malfunctioned due to power outages, worsening the traffic chaos.

Cars Trying to Drive

Districts in Gangnam, south of Han River in Seoul, were one of the hardest-hit areas.

“All roads near my home are flooded and it seems no bus operates here. I had to call my boss that I can’t come to work today,” a citizen living in Yangjae-dong wrote via Twitter.

The Sadang intersection, the southern gate to the capital, was flooded, causing severe traffic chaos in the area. Its nearly subway station, Sadang, was shut down in order to prevent it from being submerged.

Subway services were disrupted.

The services on subway line No. 1 was halted for about an hour in early Wednesday morning after Oryudong Station was submerged.

Another line linking Seoul and Bundang, a residential town in the city of Seongnam, was also disrupted due to submerged railroads.