 | |
Trucks jam an intersection near the Gyeongbu Expressway on Saturday after heavy snow fell on the Chungcheong region the previous day causing heavy traffic congestion in several sections of the freeway./Yonhap
|
 |
|
Criticism of the government¡¯s emergency management continued on Sunday. As many as 5000 vehicles were stranded on the nation's highways by heavy snow for up to 24 hours. Over the past two days, hundreds of critical messages were posted on the bulletin boards of both the Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MCT) and the Korea Highway Corporation's (KHC) websites. The messages were harshly critical, with one post stating that, ¡°People who are responsible, including the Minister and Vice Minister, related officials and employees of the corporation should commit suicide.¡± The citizen's organization Hwalbindan demanded the Minister and Vice Minister of MCT, the President of the KHC and the administrator of the Korea Meteorological Administration tender their resignations to the president.
At the belated ¡°Ministerial Conference on Measure to Counter Heavy Snow¡± held on Saturday, Prime Minister Koh Gun scolded Ministers saying, ¡°Snow removal and emergent rescue was unorganized and the countermeasures were unplanned and obsolete." The government also announced that ¡°We will carry out mock training as an intensive countermeasure to disasters, and will revise the manual on highways to cope with such disasters.¡± At the Vice Ministers¡¯ conference, there was agreement on establishing a ¡°planning group for constructing a disaster system in case of a heavy snow.¡± However, citizens reacted cynically to the news with one interviewee echoing the general mood, saying ¡°How can we respect prevention and systematic countermeasures from a government that cannot even judge the scale of the disaster.¡±
The ministry in charge of highway safety, the MCT was first notified around 2:00 p.m. on Friday, after highways in the Chungcheong area had already been shut, and after the KHC and the National Police Agency had already taken hold of the situation. The government's inept response to the crisis forced tens of thousands of people including children, the sick and elderly to shiver in cold and hunger for up to 24 hours. At first, the MCT and KHC did not realize the seriousness of the situation and announced that ¡°we will reopen the traffic by 8:00 p.m.¡± The re-opening of the highway was delayed, however, and the situation finally resolved at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, 20 hours later than predicted.
 |
|
A truck driver happily accepts bread from a police officer who made his way through the snow to distribute food to people stranded overnight without food on the Gyeongbu Expressway./Yonhap
|
|
|
Travelers, exhausted from the wait, left their vehicles when they began to run low on gas and slogged through snow that was knee deep in some places, finding safety at restaurants and motels kilometers from thier cars. Some waited for dawn sustained on bread dropped from helicopters, a scene normally reserved for war or famine in an underdeveloped country.
 |
|
Cars line up at a highway near the West Cheongju interchange on Saturday amid increasing traffic congestion caused by heavy snowfall./Yonhap
|
|
|
In response to the crisis the government plans to extend special loans totaling W60 billion to damaged farms from Monday with an annual interest rate of 3%, and W70 billion to damaged small- and medium-sized enterprises. The government will also support the first and second term¡¯s tuition fees to students of damaged families.
KHC President Oh Jum-rok expressed his intent to resign on Sunday. In materials distributed to the press today, he said, ¡°Although the heaviest snow in 100 years was a natural disaster, I express my resignation with moral responsibility for giving inconvenience to people as the person in charge of the highway.¡±
(Lee Chung-il, cilee@chosun.com )
|
