Tag: fire

I am glad someone else noticed what I pointed out in regards to lax safety at the oil storage facility that blew up recently in Goyang:

The recent explosion of an oil tank in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province ― and the ensuing fire that consumed 2.6 million liters of gasoline over 17 hours ― has revealed the lack of adequate safety regulations at oil storage sites in the country.

The explosion on Sunday was caused by a sky lantern released by a young Sri Lankan migrant worker, about 300 meters from the oil storage site, police said.

The grass around the storage compound caught fire as the sky lantern, lifted by a burning flame inside, landed there, CCTV footage showed.

As there were no fire detectors installed outside the oil tank, the operators were unaware of the danger until the explosion came 18 minutes later, the police revealed in a briefing Tuesday.

Police suspect the explosion occurred as fire sparks from the grass made contact with oil and natural gas vapors emitted from the tank’s ventilation hatch.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it seems it should take much more then a fire lantern to blow up a huge oil tank like this.  I try to look at this from the perspective of a North Korean saboteur.  If a sky lantern can do this much damage imagine what a coordinated North Korean sabotage attempt against the nations oil storage infrastructure could do?

Even if this is the cause of the fire, I have to wonder what the safety measures are around these fuel tanks if a “sky lantern” can blow one of these oil tanks up:

The police have arrested a Sri Lankan national in its probe of a recent explosion at a local oil storage facility, police officials said Monday.

The arrest came one day after an explosion at the oil storage facility in Goyang, just north of Seoul, consumed a large storage tank with 2.66 million liters of gasoline, enough to fill 250 tank trucks.

The police said the 27-year-old Sri Lankan is believed to have accidentally caused the fire by releasing a sky lantern in the vicinity of the oil storage facility.

The police believe the sky lantern may have started the fire when it fell on the lawn of the oil storage facility, causing flames that later spread into the ventilation system of the oil tank, causing the explosion.

The 27-year-old is said to be a construction worker currently working at a site near the facility.  [Korea Times]

A large oil storage tank in Goyang, northwest of Seoul, likely exploded Sunday causing the facility to be engulfed in flames, firefighters said.

The local fire department said emergency service personnel are on site and trying to put out the flames. The storage tank is part of the oil pipeline system operated by the country.

“Because the explosion occurred when everyone was off, there are currently no reports of injuries,” a source said. He said the tank contained 77 million liters of gasoline. (Yonhap)

What could be the common denominator between flaming BMWs in Korea and Korean cars bursting into flames in California? Just asking…https://t.co/DZKSWkzNUu https://t.co/DZKSWkzNUu

— tomcoyner (@tomcoyner) October 5, 2018

This is a horrible death toll:

A fire gutted the ground floor of a hospital in southeastern South Korea and sent toxic fumes raging through the six-story building, killing at least 37 people and injuring 131 others in one of the country’s deadliest blazes in a decade.

Nearly 180 people were inside Sejong Hospital in Miryang, some 280 kilometers southeast of Seoul, when the fire broke out around 7:30 a.m. Witnesses said they first saw smoke coming from the hospital’s emergency room or a dressing room for nurses next to it.

The death toll was reported to have climbed to 41, but officials later corrected it, saying some victims were counted twice. Still, the toll could rise further as 18 of the injured are in serious condition, officials said.

The fire completely burned the hospital’s first floor, but didn’t reach the higher levels. But smoke was seen billowing from windows on higher floors, and most of the fatal victims were believed to have died from inhaling toxic gas. The dead included one doctor and two nurses.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if we are going to find out later that emergency exits were blocked or locked contributing to the death toll?

The fire killed 29 people in Jecheon may have had such a high death toll because of a number of factors to include a broken emergency exit door:

Witnesses also pointed to insufficient emergency exits and illegally parked cars that caused a delay in putting out the fire by blocking fire trucks’ access to the building.

The incident is invoking comparisons with a fire which erupted three years ago at an apartment in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province. The building also contained the flammable material and was constructed in a similar style.

Police will also look into whether the building was properly managed, including the maintenance of sprinklers and other fire prevention facilities. Some reportedly testified that the exit door of the sauna, located on the second and third floors, had been broken. Twenty of the 29 people who died were using the facility when the fire erupted.   [Korea Times]

I have personally seen fire exits chained before in Korean buildings so the fact that the exit door from the sauna was not working and no one bothered to repair it is not surprising to me.  Additionally it has been discovered that the building’s design and materials used caused it to be an increased fire hazard.

Then to make matters the firefighters appeared to be totally unprepared to deal with such a large fire:

Firefighters have been criticized for not acting fast enough to save the 29 people killed in a fire that engulfed an eight-story commercial building in Jecheon on Thursday.

Witnesses said firefighters did not break the windows of the North Chungcheong Province building to allow people to escape but only used their hoses from the outside.

A victim’s husband, in his late 50s, cried that his wife struggled to break out of the building for so long that when he reached her body she no longer had fingerprints. The heartbroken man blamed firefighters for not breaking the windows to let people out.

Firefighters from the Chungbuk Fire Service Headquarters entered the second floor, where 20 of the deaths occurred, 40 minutes after arriving. Many of the victims were in the women’s sauna room in a public bathhouse.

City fire emergency service Chief Lee Sang-min said firefighters could not promptly reach the second floor because cars parked around the building were on fire and there was a danger of gas explosions.

Rescuers also were criticized for the delay in positioning a ladder platform fire engine. If it were not for a private firm sending a ladder truck, there might have been more deaths, reports said.

The fire engine was delayed about 30 minutes and saved only one person trapped high in the building while the private truck saved three on the eighth floor.

Lee said the ladder platform arrived late because of parked cars at the site.  [Korea Times]

That is pretty sad when a private company was able to get a ladder truck to rescue people before the fire department and saved more lives.

So I wonder if the Korean left will blame President Moon for the slow rescue response, lax safety standards, and demand that he should have personally been on site to direct the rescue like they did to former President Park after the Sewol Ferry Boat sinking?  Of course they won’t because the criticism was all politically motivated.  There was nothing President Park could have done to rescue the people on the Sewol just like there was nothing President Moon could do to rescue people at this fire.  I suspect we will hear little else about this fire and the lax safety culture in Korea will continue which there is a lot of blame to go around for that.

This is a really horrible fire that killed 29 people and injured 20 more:

Twenty-nine people were killed and more than 20 injured Thursday in an afternoon blaze in a building in Jecheon, some 170 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The Chungbuk Fire Service Headquarters said the blaze began in the basement parking lot of an eight-story building at 3:53 p.m. The fire quickly spread through the building housing a fitness center, driving range, public sauna and restaurants.

Fire officials said most of the victims were in the sauna as they were trapped inside of the public bath on the second floor. They said 15 people, including a 50-year-old woman surnamed Kim, were found dead in the sauna.

Twenty people were taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This provided photo shows black smoke billowing from the shipyard of Samsung Heavy Industries Co. in the southeastern port city of Geoje on May 17, 2017, after a fire broke out at the shipyard. (Yonhap)

Great job by this soldier in Daegu who climbed a water pipe to assist a family during an apartment fire in Daegu:

A routine trip to the commissary turned into a lifesaving mission, Feb. 5, outside of Camp Humphreys. Staff Sgt. Victor Gomoimunn and his wife, Nicole Lysiak, were on their way to do their grocery shopping when she noticed smoke coming from a building just down the street from their home.

Gomoimunn, a petroleum supply specialist from Waterford, New York assigned to 339th Quartermaster Company, immediately ran towards the smoke filled building asking the gathering crowd if there was anyone left inside. Upon receiving reports that there was a woman and her young child still in their apartment on the third floor he ran into the building through the front door searching for a way to get upstairs to them.

“I saw the children standing outside and I was worried about them,” said Lysiak. “We know many of the residents in the neighborhood and when I looked up he was gone.”

“The building was filled with black smoke,” said Gomoimunn. “I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t breathe.”

Knowing that someone may still be trapped inside he began searching for another way in, explained Lysiak. He ran around the side of the building searching for another entrance before spotting water pipes going up the side of the building. They happened to run near a third floor window.  [Army.mil]

You can read the rest at the link, but Gomoimunn climbed the water pipe and helped a family get on to a balcony and was prepared to help them down the water pipe when the fire department arrived to fight the fire.

A team of police and fire officials conduct an investigation on Feb. 5, 2017, into a fire that broke out at a shopping small connected to a couple of residential skyscrappers in Dongtan, a new bed town near Seoul, a day earlier. The fire killed four people. (Yonhap)