[Anchor]
Early in the morning the day before yesterday, a landslide triggered by torrential rain in Tongyeong left a woman in her 60s buried and injured. However, an SBS investigation has revealed that Tongyeong residents received emergency text messages warning them of the landslide two to three hours after it actually occurred.
Reporter Kim Minjun has more.
[Reporter]
At 5:03 AM on the 17th, the Coast Guard received a report requesting the rescue of a woman in her 60s who was buried in a landslide on Gonrido Island, Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province.
At the time, torrential rain was pouring down in Tongyeong at a rate of 74.9 mm per hour.
[Son of the Landslide Victim: I told her to come inside quickly because it was raining so hard, but at that exact moment, there was a loud pop and, in less than three seconds, we were swept away together by the mud.]
It was an hour and a half later when her 30-year-old son, who cleared the mud with his bare hands, and the Coast Guard rescued the woman in her 60s and transported her to a hospital.
However, an SBS investigation confirmed that the Tongyeong City Hall did not send out landslide evacuation text messages to residents until 7:00 AM, about 30 minutes after that.
A belated warning text notifying residents of the evacuation and landslide special advisory was delivered only after the landslide had already injured a resident and the rescue operation had been fully completed.
While acknowledging that the text message transmission was delayed, an official from the Tongyeong City Hall explained that there were unavoidable circumstances.
[Tongyeong City Hall Official: We simply didn't expect it to rain that heavily in the early morning. It was just too difficult for us to make a judgment.]
Currently, landslide risk alerts operate in a way that the Korea Forest Service sends forecast information to local governments every hour, and based on that information, local governments decide whether to issue special advisories or send text messages. However, the judgment was delayed at the local government level.
Despite the landslide special advisory system being expanded from two stages to three stages the year before last to prevent such errors and secure sufficient evacuation time, it proved to be completely useless.
Experts emphasized that under the current dualized alert system between the Korea Forest Service and local governments, municipalities must establish internal systems that enable them to make quicker decisions.
(Video by: Jung Gyeong-mun | Video Editing by: Shin Se-eun | Design by: Seo Hyun-jung)
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