South Korea to ban 'Parasite'-style basement homes after deadly floods
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The dead included a family who were trapped underground in their "banjiha" home, leading to a national outcry and calls for government action on glaring social inequalities.
A worker clears a waterlogged, mud-covered basement apartment in Seoul on Thursday.Anthony Wallace / AFP - Getty Images
Aug. 13, 2022, 12:14 AM AEST By Stella Kim and Rhoda Kwan
Now, officials say they will no longer grant permits for the small apartments — often cramped and dingy homes known as "banjiha," which were featured in Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film — and work to convert existing homes.
VIDEO - insert-text-here At least 8 killed in South Korea as heavy rains cause flooding Aug. 9, 2022 01:04
“Homes in the basements and half-basement or banjiha are backward housing models that threaten the vulnerable group of people and they must go,” Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon's office told NBC News on Friday.
The family of three were a 12-year-old girl, her mother and the mother's sister, who had Down syndrome. They all drowned in their basement home in the southern Gwanak district of Seoul on Monday, on the first day of a fierce rainfall that caused flooding up to 15 inches deep in the area. All but two families in the area were evacuated by emergency services, according to city officials.
The mother, identified as Hong by her labor union, worked as a sales associate at a duty-free store an hour from her home.
South Korea's capital has moved to ban the cramped basement flats made famous by the Oscar-winning movie "Parasite."Anthony Wallace / AFP - Getty Images
“Her name was Ms. Hong and she was the breadwinner and the head of her household,” an official from the Korean Federation of Service Workers Unions said. “She lived with a strong sense of responsibilities for her disabled sister, elderly mother as well as her 12-year-old daughter.”
Hong had lived at the apartment with her sister and daughter for seven years, after spending almost 20 years of savings to move closer to her sister's care center, the public broadcaster Korean Broadcasting System reported. She left behind her 72-year-old mother, who was in a hospital at the time of the flooding.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and the Seoul mayor visited the family's home Tuesday, where plates and dolls belonging to the girl floated on muddy water, according to footage provided by the presidential office.
The dire storms affected the entire city, including extensive water damage to the wealthy and glitzy Gangnam district, which was particularly affected as it lies lower than its surrounding areas “like a bowl,” according to Oh, the mayor.
The flooding left more than 3,032 people without homes in total, his office said, but the focus of the fallout was on Hong and Seoul's most vulnerable.
Pedestrians walk past debris outside shops at the historic Namseong market in the Gangnam district of Seoul this week.Anthony Wallace / AFP - Getty Images
Around 200,000 people live in banjiha homes in Seoul, making up around 5 percent of residences in the capital, according to official data cited by the mayor's office.
The low-income housing units, which typically sit below street level, left residents particularly vulnerable to flooding. Others who lived in banjiha homes elsewhere in the city felt they narrowly escaped the same fate as Hong and her family.
“I could have died if I was stuck in there for another half an hour and I only lived because of the people who rescued me out,” Lee Seung-hoon, 28, told the Seoul Broadcasting Station.
Existing city regulations passed in 2012 already banned the building of homes in basement areas, but around 40,000 banjiha homes have been built in the decade since, according to the mayor’s office.
The flooding revealed the South Korean capital's dire need for better drainage infrastructure to deal with extreme rains.
On Wednesday, Oh announced $1.15 billion in spending in the coming decade to build six underground tunnels to drain rainwater and prevent future flooding.
The three days of rainfall were the heaviest since records began 115 years ago, according to official data cited by the president. Yoon warned officials to prepare for similarly devastating weather in the future as climate change makes extreme weather more frequent.
“It clearly is an unusual weather situation. But we cannot just say this kind of unusual climate situation is unusual," Yoon told his Cabinet members at a meeting Wednesday at the central disaster and safety measures headquarters to discuss the recent flooding.
"This kind of unusual situation can and will be repeated at any time.”
Stella Kim reported from Seoul, and Rhoda Kwan reported from Taipei.
Torrents of water spill from Wyangala Dam in central west NSW, increasing flood risk
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4,962 views Nov 15, 2022
Guardian Australia
Wyangala Dam, in central west New South Wales, is spilling significant amounts of water into the Lachlan River after ongoing heavy rainfall. Residents of nearby Forbes were warned to evacuate by 7am Tuesday or risk being cut off as the SES say the Lachlan River is rising faster than originally forecast Australia news updates NSW floods: friends and family struggle to locate loved ones in Eugowra as waters rise ‘Like an ocean’: Molong devastated by deluge with more NSW towns hit with fresh flooding
Aerial image of the flooded town of Canowindra on Monday. Eugowra is 30km north-west in NSW. Photograph: Chris Watson Farmpix Photography
Cait Kelly Mon 14 Nov 2022 21.24 AEDT First published on Mon 14 Nov 2022 21.14 AEDT
Family and friends of missing Eugowra residents have been waiting anxiously to hear if their loved ones are safe after flash flooding inundated the town, leaving it with no reception.
The entire town of Eugowra remained cut off on Monday evening and about 200 people were being airlifted from the showground evacuation centre to Orange.
Torrents of water spill from Wyangala Dam in central west NSW, increasing flood risk – video [see above]
About 140 flood rescues have been carried out in the past 24 hours, including 100 from rooftops.
“With a population of 700, one in five residents have been rescued in the last few hours, by helicopter or by boat,” the emergency services minister, Steph Cooke, said on Monday.
“This [severe weather] event is now in its 62nd day, and every day it throws up new challenges.”
Eugowra is the location of one of 24 emergency warnings in place across NSW after flash floods hit the region in the past 24 hours. The main areas of severe impact are the towns of Parkes, Forbes, Molong, Eugowra, Cowra, Canowindra, Blayney, Young and Yass.
“With all the rain over the weekend we are still seeing significant flooding for large parts of the country – particularly for Bathurst and Forbes,” Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Jonathan How said, as the bureau issued a fresh flood warning .. http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/warnings/flood/lachlanriver.shtml .. for the Lachlan River in Forbes in the early hours of Tuesday.
The region’s mayor Kevin Beatty said the situation in Eugowra was “devastating”.
“The entire town is flood-affected and now cut off. You can only get to it by helicopter or boat and the telecommunications are down.
“The water is still quite deep, it’s subsiding slightly but they had another rise not long ago.”
The Belubula River at major flood level with water now reaching the main street of Canowindra which is 30km south-east of Eugowra. Photograph: Chris Watson Farmpix Photography
Beatty said residents were being evacuated from one of the evacuation centres after the showground was surrounded by water.
“They’re saying they’ve evacuated all those in precarious positions. Now they’re just trying to helicopter them out.”
Mat Reid, a former policeman whose home is on a hill and out of the flood waters, said the noise was so loud it woke him up.
“It’s sort of very difficult to comment on what’s happening on the other side of the river, no one can communicate,” Reid said.
“I got a message from a friend earlier this morning when they were on the roof of their house. I’ve been told they’ve been evacuated to the showground.”
Reid said he had been getting calls all day from worried family and friends wanting to see if he knew where their loved ones were.
“There’s one girl I don’t even know who called. The least I can do is try and go to the evacuation point and put them back into communication with each other.”
On social media, community members shared a spreadsheet noting who had been found and where they were now.
Cristine Trimmer, who started the list, said people were desperate for news of friends and family.
“The amount of people they are still looking for … that list is in excess of 100 that haven’t made contact yet or don’t have the ability to make contact.”
Trimmer said it was unclear who was being housed at the evacuation centre but a total of 260 people were there according to the local council.
Trimmer, who lives in Queensland but has relatives in the town, said the lack of reception was driving anxiety – but slowly people were being accounted for.
Debbie Rob lives in Forbes, which is also isolated because of flood water, and was desperate to hear about her friend Annmarie Randell who lives in Eugowra.
“I last spoke to her at 10.28am this morning,” Rob said on Monday night. “Then her phone died. All day I have been trying to contact her and reach out for support.”
Rob was able to use social media to find her and Randell has now been listed as safe.
Cooke said four people across NSW had died in the past 62 days as a result of the severe weather but no deaths had been reported in the past 24 hours.
Twelve flood rescue operators were flying in from New Zealand to support exhausted State Emergency Service crews in Parkes, the minister said.
--- [An intentionally lit controlled fire burns intensely near Tomerong, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in an effort to contain a larger fire nearby. Around 2,300 firefighters in New South Wales state were making the most of relatively benign conditions by frantically consolidating containment lines around more than 110 blazes and patrolling for lightning strikes, state Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)] Send in the drones: how to transform Australia’s fight against bushfires and floods Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/13/send-in-the-drones-how-to-transform-australias-fight-against-bushfires-and-floods ---
“The SES is now also working with authorities in Singapore and the United States to secure additional support.”
This was the first time the SES had made a request for overseas assistance, Carlene York, the SES commissioner, said.
The NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, urged people in flood-hit areas to follow emergency warnings.
“It may be the case that you don’t see flooding around you when those orders are put in place – that is because we expect and predict further flooding moving forward,” he said.
He urged people not to drive through flood waters, saying a significant number of rescues were because people tried driving on flooded roads.
“You wouldn’t drive through a bushfire – don’t drive in flood waters.”
Some 118 warnings had been issued by the SES, including for residents to evacuate to higher ground in Cowra, Canowindra, Derrinwong and Eugowra.
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