A Woman assumed to have been buried in a landslide at this New South Wales ski village has turned up alive and well, police said yesterday. The woman, assumed for the past five days to have been swept away by the landslide at Thredbo village on Wednesday night, was never in danger, a police spokeswoman said.
"The woman reported to have been swept away by the landslide while walking past the lodges with her husband is safe and well," the spokeswoman said.
She was staying in a ski lodge near the landslide and rushed with her husband to the scene late on Wednesday night to help with rescue efforts, but the pair became separated, police said. The couple eventually found each other, but only after the husband had reported her missing to rescuers.
"Rescuers assumed she must be missing. Apparently when the couple reunited, both in a state of distress, they packed up their belongings and returned to their country home," the police spokeswoman said.
Police declined to identify the couple. The woman did not come forward earlier because she thought media reports of her disappearance referred to someone else.
The news means that 19 people were buried in the landslide, not 20 as previously thought.
One survivor, ski instructor Stuart Diver (27), was rescued from the rubble on Saturday night after surviving in a concrete tomb for 65 hours.
Nine bodies have been removed from the site, leaving nine people still missing.
Meanwhile, landslides and floods touched off by torrential rains in South Korea over the past two days have killed nine people and left two missing, Home Affairs Ministry officials said yesterday.
A family of five, including a 13day-old infant, was crushed to death yesterday after a landslide engulfed their house overnight in a secluded mountainous area in the central province of Chungchong.
Heavy downpours in the past two days made 115 people homeless, most of them in Chungchong, the officials said.
Among other casualties, a holiday maker and her three-year-old daughter drowned after being swept away in a swollen river in eastern Kangwon province.
Another woman died when river banks broke in Chungchong province and a man was crushed to death when a retaining wall collapsed in south-western Cholla province.