SEOUL: Rescue efforts continued on Tuesday (March 25) to locate a motorcyclist who had fallen into a massive sinkhole in Seoul’s Gangdong-gu district, more than 12 hours after the incident, the authorities said.
Fire officials reported that they discovered the victim’s belongings and motorcycle, but have yet to locate the driver, who went missing after plunging into the sinkhole late on March 24.
At approximately 1.37am on March 25, emergency crews recovered a smartphone believed to belong to the missing motorist. At around 3.30am, they located the motorcycle, which had fallen 20m and was buried under about 50cm of earth. The licence plate had detached from the vehicle.
The authorities said about 6,480 metric tonnes of soil and sand had accumulated in the sinkhole.
Leaked water had also created roughly 2,000 tonnes of a sand-and-water mixture inside the crater. Firefighters drained about 1,800 tonnes of water using a reserve pump.
Rescue operations resumed at 7am on March 25. Crews in diving suits and a rescue dog were deployed to search near the area of land subsidence in the hope of locating the missing motorist.
The sinkhole, measuring 20m in diameter and 20m deep, opened near an intersection in Gangdong-gu at about 6.29pm on March 24.
One motorcyclist went missing after falling in, and a car driver who had passed the site just before the collapse was injured and taken to a hospital, officials said. - The Korea Herald/ANN
