Chungnam flood from above

[Anchor]

We have sent up a drone to assess the extent of the flooding in the Chungnam region.

Reporter Jeong Yeon-wook has the details.

[Report]

Fields covered in muddy water.

It has become impossible to distinguish between rice paddies and rivers.

Low-lying villages are also submerged in rising waters.

Like isolated islands, all the roads around the houses have disappeared.

The scattered patches of green rice plants are the only clue that these were once cultivated fields.

Rainfall exceeding 100mm per hour has turned people’s homes into a giant pool.

Farmers can only watch anxiously, unsure whether their crops will survive.

In Yesan, Chungnam, the Sapgyochen Stream has overflowed, inundating nearby villages and farmland all at once.

As the water rapidly rises, only the rooftops are barely visible, and the greenhouses have left only traces behind.

A village has become completely inaccessible due to road washouts.

Only one vehicle remains, unable to evacuate in time.

On the rice paddies where boundaries have disappeared, nothing is visible except for tall utility poles.

Excavators are moving frantically.

Restoration is underway at the collapsed embankments.

Even in the upper streams of rivers that have not yet overflowed, water levels are rising dangerously high.

This record-breaking rainstorm along the Chungnam west coast — said to be a once-in-200-years event — has left behind destruction as historic as its intensity.

This is KBS News, Jeong Yeon-wook.