Trapped in Raging Waters: Terrifying Moments Captured in Viewer Videos

[Anchor]

Over 120 millimeters of rain in just one hour—it is hard to fully comprehend what that actually means through numbers alone. However, viewer-submitted footage vividly captures just how terrifying extreme downpours can be. In Geoje, sudden torrential rain flooded buildings and even swept away cars.

Reporting by Cho Min-ki.

[Reporter]

A street in Okpo-dong, Geoje, Gyeongsangnam-do, in the early hours of today (August 17).

Muddy water covers the entire road, rushing down with frightening force. A man trying to retrieve a vehicle on the road gets trapped by the current, unable to move an inch.

Sewers back up, causing water to gush upward, while cars unable to withstand the strong currents are swept away.

[Park Hyung-su / Geoje, Gyeongsangnam-do: So much water came down from the mountain that it pushed the car away. Water was pouring down like a waterfall, flooding the streets and rushing everywhere.]

Footage also captured water rising rapidly by the minute overnight.

A building entrance where water had reached only to an adult's ankles was suddenly half-submerged.

One vehicle is buried under the current, making it hard to even recognize its shape.

---

Conditions did not improve even when morning arrived.

An apartment underground parking lot was completely flooded, with only the tops of vehicles barely visible, and elevators came to a halt due to a power outage.

[Kim Dong-hee / Geoje, Gyeongsangnam-do: Including the emergency stairs, the entire underground parking lot was flooded, and with a total blackout across the households, we were left stranded with nowhere to go.]

Unable to withstand the rushing torrents, store windows across the streets were shattered into pieces.

[Han Seung-heon / Geoje, Gyeongsangnam-do: The water came down to a somewhat frightening degree. It was startling in the moment, and it made my heart sink, thinking something terrible might happen.]

Tourists visiting Geoje for the holiday also found themselves shaken by the heavy rain.

[Yoon Ye-rin / Jongno-gu, Seoul: It rained so hard that we couldn't see anything ahead. It poured as if the sky had opened up, and even bricks were flying around and ending up under cars.]

Fire authorities explained that the heavy downpour coincided with the peak of the ocean tide, which appears to have worsened the flooding damage.

The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters decided to provide an emergency allocation of 3 billion won in special grants and 40 million won in disaster relief funds to heavy rain-affected areas, including Gyeongsangnam-do and Jeollanam-do.

(Video Editing: Lee Hong-myung, Footage provided by Instagram @kang_body_)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.