By Minwoo Park and Ju-min Park
UISEONG COUNTY, South Korea (Reuters) -The death toll in the wildfires raging across South Korea’s southeastern region rose to 24 and the pilot of a firefighting helicopter was killed when the aircraft crashed on Wednesday, as the country battles some of its worst forest fires in decades.
The deadly wildfires have spread rapidly and forced more than 27,000 people from their homes, the government said. The blazes, fuelled by strong winds and dry weather, have razed entire neighbourhoods, closed schools and forced authorities to transfer hundreds of inmates from prisons.
“We are deploying all available personnel and equipment in response to the worst wildfires ever but the situation is not good,” Acting President Han Duck-soo said, adding that the U.S. military in Korea was also assisting.
The Korea Forest Service said 24 people had been confirmed dead in the fires. It did not give a breakdown, but earlier the Safety Ministry said 14 people had died in Uiseong county, and four other deaths were linked to a blaze in Sancheong county,
Many of the dead were older people in their 60s and 70s, said Son Chang-ho, a local police official.
The Forest Service also said one of its fire-fighting helicopters crashed while trying to extinguish a blaze and the pilot was killed.
South Korea relies on helicopters to tackle forest fires because of its mountainous terrain and the incident led to the brief grounding of the fleet.
The Uiseong fire, only 68% contained and exacerbated by gusty winds, showed “unimaginable” scale and speed, said Lee Byung-doo, a forest disaster expert at the National Institute of Forest Science.
Climate change is projected to make wildfires more frequent globally, Lee said, citing the unusual timing of wildfires that ravaged part of Los Angeles in January and a recent wildfire in northeast Japan.
“We have to admit large-scale wildfires are going to increase and for that we need more resources and trained manpower,” he told Reuters.
The Korea Forest Service has been facing technical issues with its fleet of 48 Russian helicopters. Eight have been out of operation since last year because sanctions related to the Ukraine war mean it cannot import parts, a Democratic Party lawmaker said in October.
On Wednesday, an eyewitness said the Forest Service helicopter started making a strange sound before plunging to the ground.
“It completely exploded and I couldn’t even tell which parts were the propellers,” Kim Jin-han, 63, told Reuters.
Video footage from the scene showed what appeared to be smoking debris scattered over a hillside. The cause of the accident was being investigated, authorities said.
The weather agency has forecast rain across South Korea on Thursday, though only between 5 to 10 mm was expected in fire-hit areas.
More than 10,000 firefighters were being deployed in four separate areas on Wednesday, including hundreds of police officers and military units, while 87 helicopters were being used, the Safety Ministry said.
Kim Jong-gun, a Forest Service spokesperson, said it planned to secure more wildfire-fighting helicopters, responding to criticism about a lack of equipment and helicopters.
The blazes broke out on Saturday and were threatening several UNESCO World Heritage sites – Hahoe Village and the Byeongsan Confucian Academy – in Andong city on Wednesday, a city official said, as authorities sprayed fire retardants to try to protect them.
The flames had already burnt down Goun Temple, which was built in 681.
The government has designated the affected areas as special disaster zones, and said the fires had damaged more than 15,000 hectares (37,065 acres).
(Reporting by Minwoo Park, Jack Kim, Hyunsu Yim, Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Ed Davies, Michael Perry and Kate Mayberry)
