Typhoon kills 33 in South Korea

Gale force winds and heavy rain from a powerful typhoon lashed South Korea overnight, killing at least 33 people and forcing thousands of others to seek emergency shelter today, the country’s anti-disaster office said.

Typhoon Maemi struck late Friday with winds of up to 135 miles per hour, flooding farmlands and cities with as much as 17.8 inches of rain, the National Disaster Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters said in a statement. By today the typhoon had weakened to a tropical storm.

The storm felled trees, downed power lines and caused a landslide early today that derailed three cars of the Saemaeul Express train as it travelled from Seoul to the southern city of Andong, the statement said.

Of the 28 people injured, all but one were discharged after treatment at hospitals, it said. Traffic was halted on the line.

The anti-disaster headquarters said at least 33 people were killed in the typhoon and 14 were missing. The worst affected area was south-eastern Gyeongsang province where at least four people were buried under landslides and seven others swept away by high tides, the headquarters said without elaborating.

More than 2,000 people abandoned their homes to shelter at nearby schools and public facilities. In the nation’s second-largest city of Busan, a construction crane collapsed on a fire engine, injuring five firefighters.

The anti-disaster office also said the typhoon initially caused blackouts at 1.4 million households, but power was restored to one million homes. It said 1,116 acres of farmland and many roads, including some motorways, were flooded.

In the port city of Masan, rescue workers were using pumps today to drain the basement of a shopping centre where dozens of people were feared trapped, Yonhap said.

The power cut in the south also partially paralysed fixed-line and mobile phone networks, with electricity cut off or disrupted at the country’s three mobile phone operators and the dominant telephone company, KT.

Thousands of people who visited their hometowns on the southern islands for the annual thanksgiving Chuseok holiday since Wednesday were stranded as high swells kept ferries from operating. Flight services were disrupted as well by Maemi, which means cicada in Korean.

Traffic on the nation’s major roads slowed to a crawl as the typhoon prompted tens of thousands of travellers to return to Seoul and other major cities early.

South Korea is usually hit by a couple of typhoons each summer and early autumn. In September last year, Typhoon Rusa left at least 119 dead.