[Anchor]
The places that are most desperately in need of rain are Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province. As reservoirs are running dry one by one, even drinking water is becoming scarce, raising concerns that the damage to hard-grown crops will be even greater.
Reporter Kim Su-yun covered the story from the field.
[Reporter]
This village in Busan, home to about 60 households, has used water from a nearby valley as its water supply for decades.
As the valley stream has recently dried up, the residents' worries are growing.
[Kim Myung-ja / Resident of Sagi Village, Busan: I have lived in this house for 60 years, and this is the first time I have faced such hardship. It is the first time I have ever seen it this dry.]
This is the valley that has been used as a water supply for the village residents.
Despite the rain that fell over the weekend, it has completely dried up due to the drought.
Water is being pumped from storage facilities in the emergency water supply system to manage the immediate crisis, but capacity and usage are limited.
[Kim Gyu-tak / Representative of Sagi Village Residents, Busan: In case of an emergency, we installed a connection yesterday so that the system designed for emergency water supply can reach the drinking water tank.]
[Lee Hye-sook / Resident of Sagi Village, Busan: We can't even think about watering the fields. There isn't even enough drinking water for people, so crops, peppers, and everything else are drying up and dying...]
Reservoirs that should be supplying agricultural water show clear cracks in various places.
The water storage rate is at a quarter of the average year level.
Thanks to the rain over the weekend, some moisture can be seen even on the cracked bottom of this reservoir.
However, water has not yet risen enough to flow through the sluice gates that actually send agricultural water to the rice paddies and fields.
At Hoedong Reservoir, an emergency water source in Busan, receding water lines are clearly visible along the edges and bridge piers.
[Lee Hyung-chul / Geumjeong-gu, Busan: You see where the grass is growing? All of that used to be water.]
Over the past six months, the rainfall in the Busan, Ulsan, and South Gyeongsang Province regions has been only about half of normal levels, leading to drought warnings ranging from Caution to Alert stages in various areas.
The rain over the weekend, which peaked at around 20 mm, instead brought humid heat.
[Lee Young-chan / Sangbuk-myeon, Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province: (The rain) was just a little bit. We need a huge amount. We really need rain right now.]
With daytime highs yesterday (August 10) reaching 33.9°C (93°F) in Changnyeong and 33.2°C (92°F) in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, scorching heat is expected to continue for the time being, calling for caution against heat-related illnesses.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
Reported by Jung Kyoung-mun | Video by Park Ji-in | Graphics by Kang Yoon-jung
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