<Anchor>
This time, we will connect a reporter to Uljin, Gyeongsangbuk-do, where the large wildfire first started.
Reporter Shin Yong-shik, tell us about the situation.
<Reporter>
Yes, I am at a junkyard in Onyang-ri, Uljin-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do.
If you look behind me, you can see a building that burned down overnight (the 5th). During the night, the wind weakened a little and the forest fire stopped, but the fire continued around Onyang-ri and burned nearby forests and private houses.
As the wind direction changed from yesterday morning, the flames spread toward Uljin-eup, and the forestry authorities worked hard to protect private houses and major facilities by building a defensive line.
However, the forest fire is currently spreading in the western part of Uljin-eup, and as the head of the Korea Forest Service explained earlier, there is a Geumgangpine community with tens of thousands of pine trees, so there is concern about additional damage.
The scale of the damage is also increasing like a snowball. In Uljin alone, where the wildfire first started, the forest damage reached 11,000 hectares, and about 7,000 residents including Samcheok were evacuated.
Currently, about 590 residents of this area are also evacuating to lodgings provided by nearby town halls or county offices. Fortunately, there have been no casualties so far.
Earlier, yesterday in Uljin-eup, there was a dizzying situation in which the flame spread to a point 10 meters in front of the gas filling station.
In Uljin-gun, about 500 households had power outages and now they have been restored, and repeaters and lines of telecommunication companies were burned down due to the fire, causing communication problems in this area.
Fortunately, the Hanul nuclear power plant, where the fire spread to the borderline once, is in a safe condition, and the fire department has built a fire line around the nuclear power plant just in case.