Typhoon Hinnamnor smashes into South Korea, killing 10, leaving 66,000 homes without power and forcing thousands to flee
- The storm made landfall in the country’s southern regions on Tuesday morning, unleashing heavy rains and winds of up to 155km/h
- It killed 10 people, including seven in hard-hit port city Pohang who drowned in the submerged underground car park of an apartment complex
The death toll rose to 10, authorities said on Wednesday. In the southeastern port city of Pohang – one of the hardest-hit areas – seven bodies and two survivors were pulled out of the submerged underground car park of an apartment complex, the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said.
The storm dumped more than 94 centimetres (37 inches) of rain in central Jeju since Sunday, where winds peaked at 155km/h (96mph).
‘We have to minimise casualties’: South Korea braces for Super Typhoon Hinnamnor
The Safety Ministry said more than 3,400 people in the southern regions were forced to evacuate from their homes because of safety concerns and that officials were advising or ordering 14,000 more people to evacuate. More than 66,000 homes nationwide suffered power outages, Yonhap reported. At least five buildings were flooded or destroyed, and scores of roads were damaged.
More than 600 schools were closed or converted to online classes. More than 250 flights and 70 ferry services were grounded while more than 66,000 fishing boats evacuated to ports. Workers as of 6am managed to restore electricity to 2,795 of the 20,334 households that had their power knocked out.
A South Korean presidential official, who spoke on condition of anonymity during a background briefing, said officials were investigating the cause of the fires at POSCO’s Pohang plant, where firefighters were working to extinguish flames that damaged at least three facilities at the complex.
Lim Yoon-sook, an official from the North Gyeongsang province fire department, said the flames destroyed a building housing electricity equipment and were continuing to burn through a separate office building, although workers were close to extinguishing a smaller fire at a cokes factory.
North Korea sustained serious damage from heavy rains and floods in 2020 that destroyed buildings, roads and crops, shocking the country’s already-crippled economy.
The typhoon earlier passed Japan’s southwestern main island of Kyushu, causing widespread power outages and transport disruptions, with one man in his 70s in Saga Prefecture believed to have died after falling from a roof while attempting to stormproof it, according to authorities.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg, Kyodo, Agence France-Presse