Kindgo
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Mon Sep 2, 7:52 AM ET
By Kim Kyung-hoon
KANGNUNG, South Korea (Reuters) - South Korea ( news - web sites) said on Monday more than 150 people were dead or missing after the worst typhoon in more than 40 years battered wide areas of the country at the weekend.
Reuters Photo
Typhoon Kills at Least 42 in South Korea
(AP Video)
Typhoon Rusa also killed scores of people in North Korea ( news - web sites) and left many missing or injured, the North's official KCNA news agency said.
Troops joined the search for survivors in South Korea after the storm triggered landslides and flooded coastal areas, devastating thousands of homes and cutting off power and water supplies.
As Rusa swept inland, thousands were forced to evacuate their homes and more than a million homes were left without power. A South Korean disaster official said the storm was expected to be the most costly ever.
Roads and railways were submerged, shops destroyed, houses surrounded by flood water leaned at 45 degrees. A bus hung precariously over a river bank.
"I escaped the house with nothing," 65-year-old retiree Kwon Sa-hyun told Reuters in the worst affected city of Kangnung, which some witnesses said looked like a war zone. "Everything I own is gone. I don't know how I am going to live from now on".
In North Korea, where typhoons since the 1990s have triggered disastrous floods that have worsened food shortages, KCNA said thousands of houses and public buildings were submerged and the telephone network had been destroyed in Kangwon.
Rescue workers in the South's seaside resort of Kangnung, which has a population of 230,000, used listening devices to comb through mounds of mud and debris in the streets and atop landslides in hopes of finding survivors.
The death toll stood at 88 as of 3 p.m. (0600 GMT) while at least 70 were missing, the National Disaster Prevention Headquarters (NDPH) said in a statement.
"Far more than 100 people have been killed or have gone missing, but we think the number will increase as searches for the missing or buried people are still going on," said Kim Jin-young, a director at the NDPH.
"The number of dead and missing is on the rise," Kim told Reuters television. "The damage to property is expected to be the largest in history."
EAST COAST WORST HIT
The massive search and clean-up effort is centred on the east coast of South Korea which Rusa lashed with gusts of up to 200 kph (127 mph) on Saturday, dropping a record 871 mm (34 inches) of rain on the city of Kangnung.
"We've even lost contact with some of our police stations," a policeman in Kangnung told Reuters.
Witnesses said coastal roads and rail lines had been washed away, houses flooded and cars and trucks buried under mud.
"It was frightening, small bridges and roads were washed away, trees uprooted," Army Captain Jeong Hoon, stationed near Kangnung, told Reuters.
Korea Electric Power Corp said more than 11,000 workers had restored power to 97 percent of households by noon (0300 GMT).
By Monday afternoon damage assessments had risen to 312 billion won ($261.7 million) as reports of destruction came in from across the country, the disaster headquarters said.
Damage included homes, businesses, roads and farms growing mostly fruit and vegetables. Grain production was largely spared.
Financial markets barely blinked, with the benchmark stock index up more than two percent, but there was some concern over the inflationary impact of higher food prices.
Air, land and sea transport was largely back to normal on Monday after all domestic flights and some regional services were cancelled on Saturday.
The country's two airlines, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, said they had lost a combined 5.5 billion won in revenue.
"Rusa started to weaken around 3 p.m. yesterday (Sunday). It has passed through and left the peninsula heading east," an official at the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) told Reuters.
KIM'S HEART-ACHE
Rusa was the most destructive typhoon to hit the Korean peninsula since Sarah in 1959, which killed more than 800 people. Typhoon Thelma killed 345 people in 1987, but was not as powerful as Rusa or Sarah, according to NDPH records.
President Kim Dae-jung ( news - web sites) was quoted in the presidential Web site on Monday as saying his heart was aching and the government would do its best to help victims of the disaster return to normal life as soon as possible.
Kim had called an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers on Sunday at which he urged quick repair to typhoon-damaged facilities, including those built for the Asian Games which are to open in the southern port city of Pusan on September 29.
The typhoon ripped the roof off a stadium built for the Asian Games in Pusan but the damage would not affect the running of the event beginning at the end of the month, organisers said.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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