Most of those that were staying together were also closer together than the others, so it was even harder to deal with them, which was why their cleanup became even harder and a lot of soldiers were sacrificed.
Aside from that, the south base had a lot of navy soldiers, and a lot of those soldiers were already deployed to the sea with their ships, so the numbers of soldiers in the south base couldn't be compared to the number of soldiers in the north base at all.
Their numbers aren't enough, so it took them a longer time to clean up the south base and the nearby areas before they could finally deploy rescue operations in farther areas.
They also didn't go too far, because the power of the army isn't enough to venture too far while rescuing people.
If you just look at the population, the number of people here in the south base is actually almost the same as that in the north base, even though they hadn't been able to put a rescue operation in farther places."
