[Anchor]

We continue with news from the southern coast of Gyeongsangnam-do, which has been hit hard by torrential rain. In Tongyeong, a woman in her 60s was buried and injured in a landslide at dawn the day before yesterday (August 17). However, our reporting has revealed that residents there received emergency text alerts about the landslide long after the accident had already occurred.

Reporter Kim Minjun has this exclusive report.

[Reporter]

At 5:03 a.m. on August 17, a report was filed with the Korea Coast Guard asking to rescue a woman in her 60s who was buried in a landslide on Gonrido Island, Tongyeong, Gyeongsangnam-do.

At the time, torrential rain of 74.9 mm per hour was pouring over Tongyeong.

[Son of the Landslide Victim: I told her to come inside quickly because it was raining heavily, but at that exact split second, there was a loud bang, and within three seconds, we were both swept away by the mud.]

It was an hour and a half later when the woman in her 60s was rescued and taken to a hospital by the Coast Guard and her son in his 30s, who dug through the mud with his bare hands.

However, SBS reporting confirmed that it was only at 7:00 a.m., about 30 minutes after that, that the Tongyeong City Hall sent out landslide evacuation text messages to residents.

The "belated" text messages notifying residents of the evacuation and landslide advisories were delivered only after a resident had already been injured and completely rescued from the landslide.

While acknowledging that the text message transmission was delayed, an official from Tongyeong City explained that there were unavoidable aspects.

[Tongyeong City Hall Official: We simply couldn't have anticipated that it would rain that heavily at dawn. It was too difficult for us to make a judgment.]

Currently, landslide crisis notifications involve the Korea Forest Service sending predictive information to local governments every hour, upon which local governments decide whether to issue advisories or send text messages. However, the decision was delayed at the local government level.

Even though the landslide advisory system was 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 advisory system, which is divided between the Korea Forest Service and local governments, local governments must establish internal systems that enable them to make more prompt decisions.

(Video reporting: Jung Gyeong-mun | Video editing: Shin Se-eun | Design: Seo Hyun-jung)