SEOUL: South Korean police have launched a probe into a person suspected of unintentionally igniting the nation’s worst wildfires in historical past whereas cleansing his relations’ gravesites, an investigator mentioned on Sunday (Mar 30).
Greater than a dozen fires have been fanned by excessive winds and dry situations, killing 30 folks and burning greater than 48,000ha of forest, the worst of its type recorded in South Korea, in line with the inside ministry.
In North Gyeongsang province’s Uiseong – the hardest-hit area with 12,800 hectares of its woodland affected – a 56-year-old man was suspected of mistakenly beginning a hearth whereas tending to his grandparents’ gravesites on Mar 22, an official from the provincial police mentioned.
“We booked him with out detention for investigation … on suspicions of inadvertently beginning the wildfires,” the official, who declined to be named, instructed AFP.
Investigators will summon him for questioning as soon as the on-site inspection is full, which might take greater than a month, the official mentioned.
The suspect’s daughter reportedly instructed investigators that her father tried to burn tree branches that had been hanging over the graves with a cigarette lighter.
The flames had been “carried by the wind and ended up sparking a wildfire,” the daughter was quoted as saying to the authorities, Yonhap information company reported.
The police, who’ve withheld the identities of each, declined to substantiate the account to AFP.
The fires have been fuelled by robust winds and ultra-dry situations, with the world experiencing below-average rainfall for months, following South Korea’s hottest yr on file in 2024.
Among the many 30 lifeless is a helicopter pilot, who died when his plane crashed in a mountain mountainous space.
The blaze additionally destroyed a number of historic websites, together with the Gounsa temple complicated in Uiseong, which is believed to have been initially constructed within the seventh century.
The inferno has additionally laid naked South Korea’s demographic disaster and regional disparities, as rural areas are each underpopulated and disproportionately aged.
