SEOUL: South Korean authorities said Monday they would deploy dozens of helicopters and thousands of firefighters and soldiers as they struggle to control multiple wildfires in the southeast, which have been burning for days.
\nFour people have been killed so far, with officials warning that high winds and rising temperatures were hindering efforts to put out the blazes.
\nIn Uiseong, nearly 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of land has been affected and around 600 people evacuated, Lim Sang-seop, head of the Korea Forest Service, told a press briefing.
\n\u201cA total of 57 wildfire fighting helicopters are to be deployed to extinguish the fire,\u201d he said, adding that more than 2,600 firefighting personnel \u2013 including soldiers \u2013 would be mobilized \u201cto respond with all their might.\u201d
\nThe fire had been partly contained but was still burning as of Monday afternoon.
\nThe forest agency has issued \u201csevere\u201d fire warnings, its highest level, in multiple locations, including North and South Gyeongsang provinces, Busan and Daejeon.
\nA major wildfire claimed four lives over the weekend in Sancheong county, in South Gyeongsang province, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of Seoul.
\nThat fire was also partly contained by Monday \u2013 but still burning.
\nThe government declared a state of emergency in the affected regions, citing \u201cthe extensive damage caused by simultaneous wildfires across the country.\u201d
\nPrime Minister Han Duck-soo, who was reinstated as acting president earlier Monday, visited the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, urging authorities to work together \u201cuntil the wildfires are completely extinguished.\u201d
\n\u201cIt is a truly heartbreaking incident,\u201d he said, adding that he would meet people affected by the fires later Monday.
\nThe leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, urged authorities to \u201cmobilize all means at their disposal to quickly and safely suppress the fires\u201d and take further measures to prevent any additional wildfires.
\nSome types of extreme weather have a well-established link with climate change, such as heatwaves or heavy rainfall.
\nOther phenomena such as forest fires, droughts, snowstorms and tropical storms can result from a combination of complex factors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL: South Korean authorities said Monday they would deploy dozens of helicopters and thousands of firefighters and soldiers as they struggle to control multiple wildfires in the southeast, which have been burning for days. Four people have been killed so far, with officials warning that high winds and rising temperatures were hindering efforts to put …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78841,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78831\/revisions\/78841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}