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SEOUL — Heavy downpours lashed South Korea for a ninth day on Monday as rescue workers struggled to search for survivors in landslides, buckled homes and swamped vehicles in the most destructive storm to hit the country this year.
At least 40 people have died, 34 others are injured and more than 10,000 people have had to evacuate from their homes since July 9, when heavy rain started pounding the country. The severest damage has been concentrated in South Korea's central and southern regions.
In the central city of Cheongju, hundreds of rescue workers, including divers, searched for survivors in a muddy tunnel where about 15 vehicles, including a bus, were trapped in a flash flood that may have filled up the passageway within minutes Saturday evening.
The government has deployed nearly 900 rescue workers to the tunnel who have so far pulled up 13 bodies and rescued nine people who were treated for injuries. It wasn't immediately clear how many people were in the submerged cars.
As of Monday afternoon, rescuers had pumped out most of the water from the tunnel and were searching the site on foot, a day after they used rubber boats to move and transport bodies on stretchers.
Hundreds of emergency workers, soldiers and police were also looking for any survivors in the southeastern town of Yecheon, where at least nine people were dead and eight others listed as missing after landslides destroyed homes and buckled roads, the county office said.
Photos from the scene showed fire and police officers using search dogs while wading through knee-high mud and debris from destroyed homes.
Nearly 200 homes and around 150 roads were damaged or destroyed across the country, while 28,607 people were without electricity over the past several days, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said in a report.
Schools and the stock market were closed in Hong Kong on Monday as Typhoon Talim sideswiped the city and headed toward the Chinese mainland and the island province of Hainan.
This year has seen record-breaking stretches of high heat across large parts of China, South Korea and Japan. China's National Meteorological Administration reported that temperatures in the oasis city of Turpan in the northwestern Xinjiang region hit a record 125.9 Fahrenheit on Sunday.
In South Korea, the Korea Meteorological Administration maintained heavy rain warnings across large swaths of the country. Torrential rains were dumping up to 1.2 inches per hour in some southern areas. The office said the central and southern regions could still get as much as 7.9 inches of additional rain through Tuesday.
Returning from a trip to Europe and Ukraine, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held an emergency government meeting. He called for officials to designate the areas hit hardest as special disaster zones to help funnel more financial and logistical assistance into relief efforts.
He also blamed authorities' failure to follow disaster response rules, Reuters reported. "We've repeatedly emphasized access control over dangerous areas and preemptive evacuation since last year, but if basic principles of disaster response are not kept on the spot, it is difficult to ensure public safety," Yoon told the meeting.
Yoon later visited Yecheon where he was briefed on the search and rescue efforts.
Contributing: Reuters
