Thousands of Scouts pull out of world jamboree campsite due to extreme heat

Thousands of Scouts attending the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea are being removed from the official campsite in the south-western county of Buan amid a suffocating heatwave.

The event, which started this week, has drawn 43,000 young Scouts from 158 countries, with the UK contingent the largest at 4,500. Around 220 Irish participants attended the event, made up of 144 young people aged between 14 and 17 and 78 adults.

Hundreds of attendees have needed treatment for heat-related ailments in recent days. On Thursday, 138 people visited clinics and hospitals with heat-related illnesses, bringing the total to more than 700.

Scouting Ireland said that while five members of the Irish contingent – three adults and two teenagers – were treated for the heat, none required long-term, overnight or off-site treatment.

“We are keeping the situation under constant review. Scouting Ireland is in daily contact with the group attending the world Jamboree and with the Irish Embassy in Seoul,” it said on Friday.

Alleviate pressure

UK Scouts said it would start moving young people and adult volunteers to hotel accommodation over the next two days. “As we are the largest contingent, our hope is that this helps alleviate the pressure on the site overall,” it said.

“While we have been on site at the jamboree, the UK volunteer team has worked extremely hard with the organisers, for our youth members and adult volunteers to have enough food and water to sustain them, shelter from the unusually hot weather, and toilets and washing facilities appropriate for an event of this scale.”

The US contingent will take part in the jamboree program on Saturday before moving to the US army’s Garrison Humphreys near the jamboree site on Sunday.

“The US contingent to the World Scout Jamboree has made the difficult decision that we will be departing the 25th World Scout Jamboree site early because of ongoing extreme weather and resulting conditions at the jamboree site,” an email sent out to parents by the US contingent media team read.

The jamborees organising committee responded to the withdrawals by saying “we recognise their freedom to make decisions as Scouts and regret that they could not continue their Scouting activities [on site] to the end due to reasons such as a heatwave”.

Embarrassment

The withdrawals from the international event will be a big blow and a major source of embarrassment to the South Korean authorities, which have been working all out to limit the fallout and negative coverage generated in recent days.

South Korea has been eager in recent decades to establish prestige among advanced nations by hosting large-scale global events. Its government is keen to become the seventh nation to hold the trinity of global events, comprising the World Expo, the World Cup and Olympics. World Expo 2030, which is only months away from selecting a host country, is a national priority.

South Korea has pumped millions into improving conditions at the gathering, with the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, ordering “unlimited” air-conditioned buses and cold-water trucks and hundreds more sanitary and medical staff being brought in.

The World Organization of the Scout Movement, the global scouting body, said it had requested South Korea “consider alternative options to wind down the event earlier than scheduled”.

But it said organisers had “decided to proceed … with assurances that they will do their utmost to tackle the issues caused by the heatwave by adding significant additional resources”.

Most of those attending the jamboree, the first global gathering of the Scouts since the pandemic, are aged between 14 and 18.

South Korean authorities have issued the highest-level heat warning in four years, as temperatures in some parts of the country exceeded 38 degrees. Temperatures of up to 34 degrees are forecast at the site at the weekend.

Solve problems

Mr Yoon called for the buses to be supplied so the Scouts could rest and cool down, and for the trucks to provide water, his press secretary, Kim Eun-hye, said in a statement. He also ordered officials to improve the quality of food being provided to people there.

“All government departments should make all-out efforts to immediately solve problems at the site,” he said.

Organisers have come under fire after numerous accounts of hospital bed shortages, waterlogged conditions caused by earlier heavy rains, rotten food, swarms of mosquitoes and flies, and poor sanitation.

At a press briefing on Thursday, Choi Chang-haeng, the secretary general of the event’s organising committee, suggested that overexcitement at the sight of K-pop acts on stage had caused the heat stress.

However, some parents expressed concerns about the conditions. - Guardian