Rescue efforts continued Tuesday to locate a motorcyclist who fell into a massive sinkhole in Seoul’s Gangdong-gu district, more than 12 hours after the incident, 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 Monday.
At approximately 1:37 a.m. Tuesday, emergency crews recovered a smartphone believed to belong to the missing motorist. Around 3:30 a.m., they located the motorcycle, which had fallen 20 meters and was buried under about 50 centimeters of earth. The license plate had detached from the vehicle.
Authorities said about 6,480 metric tons of soil and sand had accumulated in the sinkhole. Leaked water had also created roughly 2,000 tons of a sand-and-water mixture inside the crater. Firefighters drained about 1,800 tons of water using a reserve pump.
Rescue operations resumed at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Crews in diving suits and a rescue dog were deployed to search near the area of land subsidence in hopes of locating the missing motorist.
The sinkhole, measuring 20 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep, opened near an intersection in Gangdong-gu at about 6:29 p.m. Monday. 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.
shinjh@heraldcorp.com
