SEOUL – Torrential rain in South Korea triggered a landslide that killed a one-year-old baby and forced hundreds of families to evacuate as it flooded roads and bridges, the authorities said on Friday.

A landslide buried the baby’s home in the south-eastern city of Yeongju overnight. Rescuers pulled to safety nine people in the home when the landslide weighing about 9.07 tonnes hit, as the fire authorities deployed more than 40 vehicles and 110 firefighters, reports said. But the baby died soon after being taken to hospital.

The death was the second since the summer rainy season began on Tuesday.

Yeongju was among the hardest-hit by the monsoon, with more than 284mm of rain since midnight on Thursday, said disaster officials, who have also declared heavy-rain warnings elsewhere in the south, including the island of Jeju.

Weather officials said they expected more rain in the south until Saturday morning. Figures from the disaster authorities showed 350 people were evacuated, most of them in the south-western province of Jeolla.

Dozens of facilities were damaged, with several roads and highways blocked or being repaired.

In the south-western county of Hampyeong, a public worker was found dead on Thursday after she went out on Tuesday to check a floodgate on the river and went missing.

Last August, record downpours that cut power and submerged subways and homes in Seoul, the capital, killed at least eight. REUTERS