Geoje Landslide Highlights Threat to Apartments as Mud Bursts Through Homes

[Anchor]

The recent landslide in Geoje that resulted in casualties bears a striking resemblance to the deadly landslide on Mount Umyeon in Seoul 15 years ago. In both incidents, masses of mud suddenly cascaded down, directly striking the lower-floor units of apartment buildings.

Reporter Yoo Soo-Hwan looks into the sheer destructive power of such landslides and whether measures can be taken to prevent them.

[Reporter]

In the early morning of July 27, 2011, a landslide on Mount Umyeon in Seocho-gu, Seoul, suddenly engulfed an apartment complex, claiming 16 lives.

Similarly, the landslide in Okpo-dong, Geoje, which killed one person and injured two others, struck at 4:30 a.m., leaving residents with virtually no time to escape.

[Ahn Jae-hoo / Resident of the Geoje Landslide Apartment: Mud burst right through the house, debris was visible, and two people were pinned under the rubble on the first floor.]

The mud that hit the back of the apartment penetrated a first-floor unit and burst straight out through the common entrance. Water-saturated soil measuring 1 meter in width, length, and height weighs about 1.5 tons, roughly equivalent to a passenger car.

Traveling down a slope, it strikes with a force equivalent to a speed of 11 kilometers per hour. In the case of a landslide, this means tens to as many as 100 car-equivalents of soil can instantaneously crash down.

In particular, the Geoje landslide occurred on the deeply sloped rear side of Mount Guksabong, located directly behind the apartment complex.

Although rockfall protection fences and retaining walls were installed on the hillside, they proved useless under extreme heavy rainfall conditions like the ones experienced this time.

[Geoje City Hall Official: The retaining wall where the soil flowed down was only about 1.5 to 2 meters high...]

Experts point out that when apartment complexes are built by cutting into mountains, a sufficient separation distance must be maintained, and retaining walls should be installed differently depending on the characteristics of the mountain.

[Park Chang-keun / President of Korea Authority for Land and Infrastructure Safety (Former Professor at Catholic Kwandong University): (Regarding retaining walls) It is necessary to strictly differentiate the design depending on whether it is a rocky mountain or a soil mountain, and if necessary, make the retaining walls considerably higher...]

[Lee Young-joo / Professor of Fire and Disaster Protection Engineering at Kyongil University: It is desirable to build while securing sufficient separation distances and providing spaces that can serve as physical buffers.]

During the Mount Umyeon landslide, large amounts of water-saturated soil also poured into apartment and residential areas, but there were no facilities to stop it.

According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, out of 160 people who died or went missing due to heavy rain over the past decade, landslide casualties accounted for the largest proportion at 75 people.

(Camera Shot by Kyungmun | Video Edited by Seeun)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.