Disaster recovery still underway

[Anchor]

With the Lunar New Year just around the corner, there are those who cannot return to their homes.

These are our neighbors who have lost their homes or workplaces due to disasters like heavy rain and heavy snowfall.

Reporter Seong Yong-hee has looked into this.

[Report]

Rows of grape vine supports are bent like taffy.

The vineyard looks as if it has been bombed, with no areas left intact.

At the end of November last year, a heavy snowfall of over 20cm turned the greenhouses into a mess.

Recovery work has just begun after a little over a month, but there is not much time left before this year's farming season, causing anxiety.

[Yoon Seok-bo/Grape farmer: "Ideally, it needs to be ready by late March for this year's farming to get back on schedule. Everything has to be demolished before we can build anew."]

A dairy farm where the barn collapsed due to heavy snowfall.

With no place to raise the cows, more than half of the dairy cows had to be slaughtered.

However, it seems that it will take more than three months to complete the recovery.

[Kim Jong-ho/Dairy farmer: "Everything is becoming a deficit. We have to somehow hold through until the next milking."]

The scars from the heavy rain are still present.

In July last year, a village was completely submerged due to record rainfall exceeding 100mm per hour.

Abandoned agricultural machinery is left standing still, and torn greenhouses remain as they are.

Most houses have completed recovery, but about five houses remain where recovery has been given up on or have been abandoned due to the burden of recovery costs.

This is because disaster relief funds did not even cover one-third of the recovery costs.

[Chae Hong-jong/Chairman of the Flooded Village Damage Response Committee: "It costs an enormous amount of money, and people really say they want to die. We can't pull in money. Residents have been saying they want to die."]

Despite the festive atmosphere of the long holiday, efforts to rise above the disaster continue.

This is KBS News, Seong Yong-hee.