Tag: fire

Fortunately firefighters were able to get the Coupang warehouse fire under control before it spread to the floor with the lithium ion batteries:

A massive fire at a Coupang logistics center in Incheon was brought under control at around 8 p.m. Monday, about 61 hours after it broke out Saturday morning.

Incheon Fire Headquarters said the blaze at Coupang’s No. 32 logistics center in Seoknam-dong, Seohae-gu, had been contained. The fire began at 6:54 a.m. Saturday on the sixth floor of the eight-story facility, which has a total floor area of about 299,000 square meters, before spreading to the seventh floor.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Coupang just continues to take major hits and this horrible fire may soon get even worse for them:

The fire at the Incheon Coupang logistics center has continued for three days, with hundreds of logistics warehouse robots, which pose risks of explosion during fires, located on the fifth floor directly below the sixth floor where the fire initially broke out. Fire authorities are making all-out efforts to prevent the spread of the fire.

Heo Seok-kyung, head of Incheon Seobu Fire Station, said during a briefing near the site of the Incheon Coupang logistics center fire on the 20th, “There are hundreds of logistics warehouse robots using lithium batteries on the fifth floor of the center,” adding, “We are intensively responding by deploying firefighters to prevent the fire from spreading to this area.”

Heo explained that the amount of lithium batteries in the logistics warehouse robots on the fifth floor is equivalent to that of 20 regular electric vehicles.

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Coupang warehouse blaze

Smoke billows from a blaze at a warehouse of retail giant Coupang Corp. in Incheon, west of Seoul, on July 20, 2026, as firefighters continued to battle the fire that broke out more than 47 hours earlier and continued to rage and force residents to evacuate amid concerns of a potential collapse of the building. (Yonhap)

The deadly Wando fire was caused by, wait for it, safety violations:

A Chinese national was booked Monday on charges of accidentally causing a fire at a cold storage warehouse in the southwestern county of Wando last week, which killed two fire fighters, police said. 

The suspect, who was booked without detention, is suspected of causing the fire while using a torch to remove epoxy flooring, a highly flammable substance, as part of floor-leveling and repaving work, according to the Wando police station.

The suspect was said to have been working alone, which officials believe constitutes a violation of safety protocol requiring a two-person team when doing fire-related work.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but there is a lot to unpack here. First of all the article doesn’t say if this guy is a legal or illegal immigrant. Regardless this Chinese national is taking a job away from a Korean national. Secondly is this is another example of a tragic event caused by lax safety enforcement in South Korea. You would think after the Sewol ferry incident the Itaewon crowd crush and so many other preventable tragedies that Koreans would take basic safety precautions more seriously.

What a disaster this has turned into. Why were such sensitive data servers located near lithium ion batteries known to cause fires? Hopefully other governments and businesses are looking at where their cloud based storage is located at in order to prevent something like this from happening again:

The government’s official document storage system has been destroyed in last week’s fire at the state data management agency, wiping out work documents of the nation’s 750,000 civil servants, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

The cloud-based repository, known as G Drive, was among the 96 systems that burned down in Friday’s fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon, about 140 kilometers south of Seoul, according to the ministry.

As the system is not backed up externally, all documents stored on the repository have been lost. Government employees have been advised to save all work-related documents on G Drive since 2018, rather than on their computers.

Government branches that have exclusively used the system to store work documents are expected to experience significant disruptions to operations.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully this fire can be contained before it spreads into the city:

A fire on a mountain in Daegu began spreading toward nearby villages Monday, triggering the second-highest firefighting response.

The blaze began around 2 p.m. on Mount Hamji in the city some 230 kilometers southeast of Seoul, prompting forest authorities to issue a Level 1 wildfire response involving 19 helicopters, 38 pieces of equipment and 165 personnel.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is a new level of crazy:

The suspected arsonist behind a fatal fire that broke out Monday morning at an apartment in Bongcheon-dong, Gwanak-gu, southern Seoul, was found dead at the site, police said Monday.

The scorched body of a 61-year-old man, the prime suspect, was found on the fourth floor of the 21-story apartment building, authorities said, after the fire was extinguished at around 10 a.m., leaving one dead and six injured.

The suspect, according to the police, lived on the third floor of the apartment building and frequently had fights with his upstairs neighbors due to noise complaints.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but the man started the fire with a pesticide sprayer he converted into a flamethrower. In his suicide note he thoughtfully left 50,000 won ($35) for his mother’s medical bills.

A pretty badge tragedy at this hotel construction site in Busan:

Six workers died and seven others were injured in a fire at a hotel construction site in the southeastern port city of Busan on Friday, authorities said.

The fire started at the Banyan Tree hotel under construction at approximately 10:50 a.m., presumably from insulating material loaded near a swimming pool on the building’s first floor, according to the Busan firefighting headquarters.

Firefighters rescued those trapped inside using helicopters, but six were later pronounced dead. Fourteen others were safely rescued from the roof, while more than a hundred workers evacuated.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.