Since July 9, several provinces of South Korea have been hit by heavy rains, which became particularly intense from Thursday and caused floods in which at least 40 people died, while more than 10,000 were evacuated. About 30,000 homes are still without electricity. Between Sunday and Monday, rescuers recovered the bodies of 13 people who died in the flooding of a tunnel in the city of Cheongju, in the Northern Chungcheong province. At least 15 vehicles, including a bus, were trapped in a 685-metre-long tunnel: according to the authorities, it filled up with water in two or three minutes.
The failure to close the tunnel and in general the insufficiently prompt response to weather warnings by local authorities is causing a lot of controversy in South Korea.
Returning to Seoul from a state visit to Ukraine, President Yoon Suk-yeol accused local administrators that he has not fully complied with the government’s indications in the event of floods, but he also underlined how extreme climatic events such as the current one are destined to be increasingly the norm: «We must accept that climate change is already causing its effects and we have to deal with it”.
The bus trapped in the tunnel (Kim Ju-hyung/Yonhap via AP)
The Osong tunnel, where at least 13 people died, is near a river that burst its banks on Saturday night. Many residents and relatives of the victims spoke of the «man-made disaster», believing that the tunnel should have been closed previously. The provincial authorities instead defined the event as sudden and unpredictable: the monitoring carried out up to a few minutes before the flooding would not have indicated that the tunnel was at risk: when the river broke its banks, the tunnel filled up in a few minutes , submerging passing vehicles. Currently 900 men are engaged in rescue operations and recovery of corpses.
Another province particularly affected by the floods is the mountainous province of Northern Gyeongsang, where 19 people died mainly due to large landslides caused by the rains, which engulfed entire homes. Around 150 roads have been destroyed across the country, while at least nine are still missing.
Una frana nella provincia del nord Gyeongbuk (Gyeongbuk Fire Station Service Headquarters/Yonhap via AP)
In the most affected provinces it was estimated that 60 centimeters of rain fell in three days: in South Korea between 100 and 180 centimeters of rain usually fall in a year. Although it is not possible to automatically attribute a single extreme event to climate change without specific studies, climatology has long reported that climate change caused by human activities leads to an increase in extreme weather events such as floods and droughts in many parts of the world.