I'd seen this video of the Umyeonsan landslide at the Marmot's Hole, but hadn't seen this view of it happening from the street (from a car's black box).
Pretty terrifying. I hadn't realized the extent of the damage until seeing these photos linked at ROK Drop, which make clear that at least the first two floors of the apartment building at the bottom of the slope were decimated.
The victims plan a lawsuit against the local governments, claiming they knew of the risk but did nothing to alert people to it. 18 people were killed, including 3 in the apartments seen in the photos linked above. Other articles look at the aftermath of the flooding and the funeral of a conscript police officer who was swept away during rescue operations in Dongducheon. It's still mind-boggling how much rain we got.
Seeing the video above, with the cars that happened to be passing by at that moment being washed away, it's hard not to think about chance, and it reminded me of this excellent, excellent episode of the documentary series First Person by Errol Morris (director of The Fog of War) entitled "Leaving the Earth," about a pilot dealing with one of the worst situations a commercial airliner could ever experience. If you have an hour to spare, it's well worth the time.
The people could win their class action lawsuit against the city since it sent a text message to one retired worker warning him about the mudslide. If they had updated their system and sent the text message to the right person perhaps the people could've been warned? I'm not sure how you made a connection to the Iowa plane crash but I remember watching in on CNN.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the photos of the damaged apartments makes you think and shudder. Especially as here in Busan quite a number of apartment complexes are built tucked into the side of mountains.
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