Hinnamnor is the 11th typhoon of this year that has cleared its way through Jeju Island and Gyeongsang Province during the early morning of Sept. 6, causing devastation and irreparable scars to millions of lives. Named after a national reserve in Laos, the Category-5 equivalent super typhoon Hinnamnor landed on the coast of Geoje at 4:50 A.M., headed North East at 50km/h, and exited through the sea of Ulsan at 7:30 A.M. It is yet the strongest typhoon of this year and has incurred 12 deaths, ruined 3,800ha of agricultural goods, and submerged over 10,000 cars in Korea.
Pohang was one of the most severely impacted regions as nine tragic deaths came solely from Pohang. The nation’s attention was specifically focused on an underground parking lot of an apartment complex where 9 people were stranded for more than 15 hours while first responders had difficulty pumping out enough water to start the search and rescue. Two survivors were miraculously found breathing in small air pockets that seem to have formed near the ceiling. They were sent immediately to the hospital and appeared to be well and healthy. Unfortunately, one of the survivors was a mother of a middle school son who was also down in the parking lot but did not make it out alive. The military has also gained attention on social media for mobilizing their armored vehicles to rescue civilians stranded in the strong currents of the flood.
The Korean government has recently released a threat assessment of the major coastal cities in which the entire coast of Pohang, Busan, and Jeju were categorized as regions of high vulnerability to climatic calamities. Installation of sea-side impermeable walls in coastal cities and underground reservoirs in inland cities are currently being discussed as mitigation strategies. The idea is to prevent water from overflowing into the land and to create a large underground storage buffer so as to not overwhelm the sewage system. Notwithstanding the ingenuity of these strategies, they are not the solution to the problem ahead, rather a means to buy more time. The disappearance of coastal cities due to rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events were foreseeable disasters that climate scientists have been warning politicians for decades. The consequences of our inactions are just starting to take a toll.