<Anchor>
It has been a month since the East Coast wildfire that caused the greatest forest damage ever.
It is now the season when spring flowers are blooming everywhere and forests are turning green, but areas affected by forest fires remain gray.
Air pollution caused by forest fires is also serious, and it is analyzed that it will take 100 years for the ecosystem to fully recover.
This is reporter Baek Haeng-won from G1 Broadcasting.
<Reporter>
This is the Okgye area of Gangneung, which has been damaged by a large forest fire this time as well as in 2019.
At that time, the newly planted seedlings did not grow and turned into black charcoal.
This forest fire burned 5.22 million trees in Gangneung and Donghae alone.
The amount of greenhouse gases generated during this conversion of trees to ashes is enormous.
On the 7th of last month, when the forest fire spread, the city of Gangneung, 30 km away from the fire site, was also covered with smoke.
About 1.31 million tons of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, generated from the wildfires on the east coast.
This is equivalent to 88% of the 24.91 million cars registered in Korea moved from Seoul to Busan.
Since these extreme greenhouse gases are intensively emitted in a specific area in a short period of time, the damage is bound to be greater.
[Dr. There is.]
Ecosystem restoration is also an issue.
It may take years to replant trees in degraded mountain areas, but reforestation is only the beginning.
It took 20 years for landscapes and vegetation, 35 years for wild animals, and more than 100 years for the microbes in the soil to return to their original state.
[Lim Yong-jin/Director of Forest Disaster Safety Division, Eastern
Regional Forest Service: It takes at least 30 years to find the skeleton of the forest, and it will take 60 years and up to 100 years to get on track.]
The nature of the city is groaning helplessly in front of the fire.
(Video coverage: Jo Eun-ki G1 Broadcasting, Kim Min-soo G1 Broadcasting)