People AND Explosives Missing from Flood

You just don't see that every day! - HLG in the Far East Offices of FWSAAB

People and Explosives Missing After South Korea Deluge
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: July 28, 2011
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SEOUL, South Korea — Thousands of soldiers and police officers searched muddy wreckage and rain-swollen streams on Thursday for victims, survivors and explosives after floods and mudslides set off by torrential rain killed at least 48 people. Three others were reported missing.

The Defense Ministry said soldiers were looking for several active land mines buried decades ago near an air defense unit on Mount Wumyeon in southern Seoul. Landslides tore away parts of the mountain, slamming through homes and killing 16 people.

In Yangju, a border town north of Seoul, soldiers have recovered most of the land mines and other ammunition lost in a landslide that damaged an army depot. But they were still looking for an undisclosed number of explosives. Several North Korean land mines, apparently swept away by floodwaters, have been found in streams near the border in recent weeks.

At a mountainside resort village in Chuncheon, 60 miles east of Seoul, university students running a volunteer summer camp for local children were asleep when a landslide engulfed their lodgings around midnight Tuesday.

Ten of the 13 people found dead in the mud were university students, the police said. Police officers rescued 20 others from the rubble that covered several homes and businesses.

In a scene captured by a resident with a home video camera and broadcast nationwide, a mudslide pushed down Mount Wumyeon, which is popular among hikers, engulfing a road and tossing cars like toys in a furious wave of mud, water and gravel.

Rain has soaked much of the country for the past month. The most recent deluge was heaviest in Seoul and towns in northern South Korea. In several towns around Seoul, people died in flash floods. In Dongducheon, a city near the border with North Korea, four people were killed in flooding set off by 26 inches of rain since Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday morning, commuters found roads blocked by mudslides. Large stretches of Seoul’s boulevards were turned into brown pools, with only the roofs of abandoned cars exposed.

“I heard this terrible rumble,” a 57-year-old survivor of the Chuncheon mudslide told the national Yonhap news agency. “I woke up others, and we rushed out. In a split second, our motel was under the mud