Nine bodies recovered from flooded South Korea tunnel
South Korean authorities today recovered the bodies of nine people who died trapped in a submerged tunnel as heavy rain and flooding sweeps the nation.
Some 15 vehicles were estimated to have been stuck underwater in the Osong underpass shortly after a levee of a nearby river was destroyed by rain on Saturday.
CCTV footage aired on local broadcaster MBC showed muddy water rushing into the tunnel in Cheongju as vehicles drove past with their wheels submerged.
Seo Jeong-il, head of the west Cheongju fire station, said: ‘We are focusing on the search operation as there’s likely more people there. We are doing our best to wrap it up today.’
Thirty-five victims have now been identified nationwide after a week of torrential downpour, with at least ten people missing and 7,866 affected by evacuations.
The death toll in the Cheongju tunnel stands at nine, including one body retrieved on Saturday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
Nearly 400 rescue workers were called out to search the 2,247ft long tunnel in the central city of Cheongju, where vehicles – including a bus – became trapped yesterday.
Images show rescue workers pumping murky water out from the tunnel to lower the water level while boats patrolled the area.
The underpass was hit by a flash flood on Saturday after the banks of the Miho River collapsed under pressure of the rain.
Heavy rain has swept through South Korea since Sunday June 9.
One survivor from the submerged tunnel said the government should have restricted access to the underpass when flooding was expected, Yonhap reported.
A North Chungcheong official said the levee unexpectedly collapsed before the precipitation reached the level required for restricting access to the tunnel.
The latest disaster came in spite of South Korea’s vow to step up preparedness against torrential rains after Seoul was hit last year with floods.
Last year saw the heaviest rain in 115 years, with floods hitting basement flats in low-lying neighbourhoods hardest, including the largely affluent Gangnam district.
President Yoon Suk Yeol, now on an overseas trip, convened a video-linked response meeting and acknowledged that some regions had failed to take preemptive measures against the extreme weather.
Yoon ordered Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to mobilise all available resources to minimise casualties and urged the weather agency to quickly release forecasts because more heavy rain was expected in the coming days, his office said.
The Korea Meteorological Administration said the central and southern parts of the country could receive as much as 300 millimetres (12 inches) of additional rain by Tuesday.
The Ministry of Interior and Safety said 10 people were missing across the country as of 11am (2am GMT), with the rain causing landslides and floods.
The ministry data does not include those in the flooded tunnel because it was not immediately clear how many people were trapped underwater.
While South Korea often experiences heavy rains in summer, it has witnessed a sharp increase in torrential rains in recent years.
Korea Railroad Corp has halted all slow trains and some bullet trains since Saturday due to safety concerns over landslides, track flooding and falling rocks.
President Yoon Suk Yeol spent the weekend in Kyiv, where he spearately pledged more military and humanitarian aid in the fight against Russia.
A South Korean official said Sunday the country would provide more demining equipment to Ukraine.
‘We are thinking to expand support on mine detectors and demining equipment as Ukraine’s demand for them was assessed to be desperately huge,’ Yoon’s deputy national security adviser, Kim Tae-hyo, told a briefing. (Daily Mail)
