UISEONG COUNTY, South Korea, March 26 (Reuters) – The death toll in the wildfires raging across South Korea’s southeastern region rose to 24 and the pilot of a firefighting helicopter was killed when the aircraft crashed on Wednesday, as the country battles some of its worst forest fires in decades.

The deadly wildfires have spread rapidly and forced more than 27,000 people from their homes, the government said. The blazes, fuelled by strong winds and dry weather, have razed entire neighbourhoods, closed schools and forced authorities to transfer hundreds of inmates from prisons.

“We are deploying all available personnel and equipment in response to the worst wildfires ever but the situation is not good,” Acting President Han Duck-soo said, adding that the U.S. military in Korea was also assisting.

The Korea Forest Service said 24 people had been confirmed dead in the fires. It did not give a breakdown, but earlier the Safety Ministry said 14 people had died in Uiseong county, and four other deaths were linked to a blaze in Sancheong county,

Many of the dead were older people in their 60s and 70s, said Son Chang-ho, a local police official.

The Forest Service also said one of its fire-fighting helicopters crashed while trying to extinguish a blaze and the pilot was killed.

South Korea relies on helicopters to tackle forest fires because of its mountainous terrain and the incident led to the brief grounding of the fleet.

The Uiseong fire, only 68% contained and exacerbated by gusty winds, showed “unimaginable” scale and speed, said Lee Byung-doo, a forest disaster expert at the National Institute of Forest Science.

Climate change is projected to make wildfires more frequent globally, Lee said, citing the unusual timing of wildfires that ravaged part of Los Angeles in January and a recent wildfire in northeast Japan.