Wind-dri­ven wild­fires that were among South Ko­rea’s worst ever have rav­aged the coun­try’s south­ern re­gions, killing 24 peo­ple, de­stroy­ing more than 200 struc­tures and forc­ing 27,000 res­i­dents to evac­u­ate, of­fi­cials said Wednes­day.

The death toll in­clud­ed a pi­lot who died af­ter a he­li­copter crashed dur­ing ef­forts to con­tain a blaze in the south­east­ern town of Uiseong, one of the hard­est-hit ar­eas. The air­craft had no oth­er crew mem­bers. Po­lice said that most of the dead are those in their 60s and 70s.

Wild­fires in South Ko­rea de­stroyed near­ly half of more than 30 struc­tures at an an­cient tem­ple. The wind-dri­ven blazes rav­aging the coun­try’s south­ern re­gions have killed 18 peo­ple, de­stroyed more than 200 struc­tures and forced 27,000 peo­ple to evac­u­ate, of­fi­cials said Wednes­day.

The Na­tion­al Fire Agency said at least 26 peo­ple sus­tained vary­ing de­grees of in­juries.

An an­cient Bud­dhist tem­ple, hous­es, fac­to­ries and ve­hi­cles were de­stroyed in the wild­fires that have burned 43,330 acres (17,535 hectares), the gov­ern­ment’s emer­gency re­sponse cen­tre said.

In a tele­vised ad­dress, South Ko­rea’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Han Duck-soo said the wild­fires that be­gan last Fri­day were worse than many pre­vi­ous ones.

“Dam­ages are snow­balling,” Han said. “There are con­cerns that we’ll have wild­fire dam­ages that we’ve nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced, so we have to con­cen­trate all our ca­pa­bil­i­ties to put out the wild­fires in the rest of this week.”

Han said crews strug­gled to ex­tin­guish the wild­fires be­cause strong winds swept the ar­eas overnight. He al­so said about 4,650 fire­fight­ers, sol­diers and oth­er per­son­nel were work­ing Wednes­day with the help of about 130 he­li­copters, adding that “a small amount” of 5-10 mil­lime­tres (0.1-0.3 inch­es) of rain was ex­pect­ed Thurs­day.

As of Wednes­day evening, fire­fight­ers were tack­ling at least four ac­tive wild­fires, in­clud­ing in the south­east­ern coastal town of Yeongdeok, which alert­ed res­i­dents of the near­est vil­lage to evac­u­ate to an in­door gym­na­si­um.

Strong winds and smoke-filled skies forced au­thor­i­ties in the south­east­ern city of An­dong to or­der evac­u­a­tions in two vil­lages, in­clud­ing Pun­cheon, home to the Ha­hoe folk vil­lage — a UN­ESCO World Her­itage Site found­ed around the 14th-15th cen­tu­ry. Hik­ers were ad­vised to leave the scenic Jiri Moun­tain, one of the coun­try’s largest na­tion­al parks, as an­oth­er fire spread clos­er.

Ob­servers say the on­go­ing wild­fires are the third biggest in South Ko­rea’s his­to­ry in terms of land burned. The largest fires were in An­dong, the neigh­bour­ing coun­ties of Uiseong and San­cheong, and the city of Ul­san.

On Tues­day, of­fi­cials said fire­fight­ers had ex­tin­guished most of the flames from the largest wild­fires in those ar­eas, but wind and dry con­di­tions al­lowed them to spread again.

The blaze in Uiseong de­stroyed about 20 of the 30 build­ings and struc­tures at Goun­sa, a tem­ple said to be orig­i­nal­ly built in the 7th cen­tu­ry. Among the burned struc­tures were two state-des­ig­nat­ed “trea­sures” — a pavil­ion-shaped build­ing erect­ed over­look­ing a stream in 1668, and a Joseon dy­nasty struc­ture built in 1904 to mark the longevi­ty of a king.

Mean­while, the Jus­tice Min­istry said it pro­tec­tive­ly re­moved 500 in­mates from a de­ten­tion cen­tre in Cheong­song, an­oth­er south­ern town, but no dam­ages were re­port­ed to the fa­cil­i­ty.

The Ko­rea For­est Ser­vice said it had raised its wild­fire warn­ing to the high­est lev­el na­tion­wide, re­quir­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ments to as­sign more work­ers to emer­gency re­sponse, tight­en en­try re­stric­tions for forests and parks, and rec­om­mend that mil­i­tary units with­hold live-fire ex­er­cis­es.

Among the dead were four fire­fight­ers and gov­ern­ment work­ers who died in San­cheong on Sat­ur­day af­ter be­ing trapped by fast-mov­ing flames dri­ven by strong winds, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials sus­pect hu­man er­ror caused sev­er­al of the fires, pos­si­bly due to the use of fire while clear­ing over­grown grass in fam­i­ly tombs or sparks from weld­ing work.

SEOUL, South Ko­rea (AP) —