Tag: fire

South Korea expresses its condolences to France for the fire that damaged the Notre Dame cathedral:

South Korea voiced regret Tuesday over the massive fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and announced plans to conduct emergency inspections of local cultural assets.
The flames damaged the 12th-century cathedral, located in the heart of Paris, the previous day, sending a shock wave across the world.
“On behalf of the South Korean government, the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) expresses deep regret for the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral,” the agency said in a press release. “South Korea has nearly suffered a loss of precious cultural property due to the fire at Sungnyemun Gate.”
In 2008, the wooden portion of the gate, designated as a National Treasure of South Korea, was damaged by arson, with restoration work completed five years later.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but like the Sungnyemun Gate, it will be interesting to see if the Notre Dame cathedral fire was cause by arson as well. However, Paris officials are claiming it is an “accident” though they are investigating where the fire started. I don’t know how you claim something is an accident if you don’t know what started it.

I guess we will see what happens.

Helicopter in response to a fire at DMZ delayed due to new requirement for #SouthKorea to notify #NorthKorea first, per the 9/19 inter-Korea military agreement. Why did #MoonJaein give sovereignty to Kim Jong-un? Is it his to give?https://t.co/uUqqJgrbg7

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) November 26, 2018

A firefighter walks through a fire-gutted boarding house in downtown Seoul on Nov. 9, 2018. At least six people were reported dead and scores of others taken to hospitals with injuries from the fire at what is locally called a “goshiwon,” a dorm-type accommodation of small rooms often used as a place to stay by the underprivileged. (Yonhap)

The Sri Lankan man was arrested for the sky lantern that caused the oil tank fire in Goyang, but what about the personnel at the elementary school that originally lit the sky lanterns?  Shouldn’t they also be partially to blame for lighting sky lanterns that are an obvious fire hazard?:

The man was arrested on Monday.

He told police he lit the lantern out of curiosity after he discovered two lanterns which had landed at the construction site after a ceremony at a nearby elementary school on Saturday. A gust of wind blew the lantern away just after he lit the small fuel cell inside, the man said. He chased it towards the storage station but did not see the lantern land on the grass.

“He regrets his action a lot,” said Jang Jong-ik, the chief detective of the Goyang Police Precinct, who is investigating the case, on a CBS radio program on Wednesday.

According to Jang, the Sri Lankan man has been living in Korea for three years with his younger brother. He makes around 3 million won a month.

Police concluded Monday that the man was aware that the storage facility contained flammable material and arrested him on charges of misdemeanor arson. They requested a detention warrant for him on Monday, but the prosecution dismissed the request on Wednesday, stating there is a “lack of evidence on the cause and effect of the incident.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I think the largest blame should go whoever is responsible for safety at the oil storage facility.  Just imagine the damage North Korean saboteurs could do if a simple sky lantern can do this much damage.

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.