Satellite pictures reveal the true devastation caused by typhoonACADEMICS have revealed evidence that a disaster which claimed up to 10,000 lives has been covered up by the secretive regime in North Korea.
Experts from the International Landslide Centre at Durham University analysed satellite images taken over the Communist state of the destruction caused by super typhoon Bilis in July.
They concluded that the extent of the devastation is being massively under-reported by Pyongyang.
The team of researchers has found evidence that the typhoon triggered floods and landslides around the town of Yangdok, with entire villages being swept from the slopes and apartment blocks flooded as residents slept.
The extent of the damage was discovered after the centre examined before and after images from TopSat, the satellite built by the British-based QinetiQ consortium.
According to the North Koreans, 549 people died in the typhoon, with another 295 missing, but landslide expert Professor David Petley and his team at Durham were called in after reports reached South Korea that the true figure could be far higher.
Professor Petley said: "It is clear that the level of damage is extremely high.
"Based on experience from other disaster sites, and as the flood is believed to have happened in the middle of the night, when many of the inhabitants in the mainly residential buildings were sleeping, it is likely that the death toll associated with these floods would have been very high, probably well over 10,000.
"Certainly Typhoon Bilis resulted in a disaster on an epic scale in North Korea."
The images show that bridges and at least 27 large apartment blocks were wrecked in the floods, which happened between midnight and 4am, suggesting that people were buried or drowned in the lower storeys of buildings that were not destroyed.
There is also evidence of destroyed roads and railway lines; complete infilling of reservoirs and extensive damage to agricultural land, which the experts say will lead to food shortages in the future.
The International Landslide Centre is compiling a unique global database in which all known fatal landslide and rockfall events are collated.
Last year, the team achieved a breakthrough by developing a computer model which could predict the precise moment when a hillside would fail.
The information has helped them develop an early warning system to save some of the average 8,000 lives a year lost to landslides.
That system was put to the test in April, when they sent a team of experts to Kashmir to help predict where landslides would occur in an attempt to to save lives among the thousands of refugees still homeless after last year's earthquake.
6:01am Friday 24th November 2006
