Citizens wait in a long queue to take buses near Sindorim Station, Seoul, Thursday morning, as some subway lines halted services due to power outages caused by typhoon Kompasu. The Typhoon caused severe traffic chaos in the metropolitan area including Incheon. / Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han |
By Park Si-soo
Typhoon Kompasu battered Seoul and other central parts of the Korean Peninsula early Thursday morning, disrupting metro operations in the capital, causing massive power outages and grounding domestic and international flights.
The seventh typhoon of the year pounded the western coast and central parts of the country earlier than forecast by the weather agency, shattering signboards and uprooting trees. It was the strongest tropical storm to hit Seoul in a decade, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).
Kompasu, which means “compass” in Japanese, forced commuters to suffer the worst transportation chaos in years. The maximum wind speed reached nearly 30 meters per second in the capital.
More than 100 flights were grounded and thousands of fishing boats and ferries had to find shelter to avoid high waves accompanying the downpour. Many above-ground sections of subway services linking Seoul and its suburban areas were out of service for hours Thursday morning due to the power outages.
The blackout hit more than 1.46 million houses and some hospitals, according to the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp.
“Kompasu moved northward a lot faster than expected, propelled by a subtropical jet stream. Its damage was greater than expected though we have yet to figure out the exact scale,” said a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Thursday.
Police said five people were killed by the typhoon. A senior citizen in Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, was killed by an electric shock; a 37-year-old man in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, was crushed by a falling tree; and another senior citizen in Seosan, South Chungcheong Province, was killed, after being hit in the head by a flying roof tile.
Elementary and middle schools delayed the start of classes by two hours.
Numerous rice paddies in the southern part of the country were inundated by flood waters and many orchards sustained losses as numerous fully and half-ripened fruit were ripped from trees by gusts of wind.
Some regions in Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces had torrential downpours of more than 50 millimeters per hour. Still, no major flooding or landslides were reported, NEMA added.
The typhoon skirted southern Jeju Island and the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula Wednesday night and made landfall on Ganghwa Island, about 80 kilometers west of Seoul, at around 6:36 a.m., Thursday.
It passed over the country around 11:34 a.m., said the KMA. The KMA lifted its typhoon warning around noon.
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무디스, 스페인·伊·포르투갈 신용등급 강등
