Tag: fire

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)

The memorial hall for late President Park Chung-hee is destroyed in a fire on Dec. 1, 2016, in his birthplace in Gumi, some 261 kilometers southeast of Seoul. The fire took place at around 3:15 p.m., and is being investigated as arson, at a time when his daughter, incumbent President Park Geun-hye, is facing strong public pressure to step down in order to take responsibility for an influence-peddling scandal involving herself and her confidante. (Yonhap)

This is a really horrible tragedy which appears to have been caused by negligence by the driver:

A fire on a tour bus killed 10 people Thursday night on a highway in Ulsan. Seven others on the bus, which was carrying 22 people including a tour guide and the driver, were injured.

About 10:10 p.m., the bus scraped against a crash barrier several times while changing lanes. It then caught fire.

The passengers could not get out because the crash barrier was blocking the door. Some of them managed to break the window and escape, but 10 people could not escape from the smoke and fire, survivors and witnesses said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire at 11:01 p.m. Only the frame of the bus was left.
The tour guide told police that they couldn’t find the emergency hammer, so the driver used a fire extinguisher to break the windows.

The driver, surnamed Lee, 49, claimed that one of the tires went flat and made the bus lose balance. He added he did not doze off. But police suspect he was speeding, based on traffic camera footage and testimony from some of the passengers that the bus was travelling at high speed before suddenly changing lanes.

Police will request an arrest warrant for the driver for accidental homicide, saying Lee did not drive safely enough. “The driver claims the accident was caused by a flat tire, so we will send the bus to the National Forensic Service for inspection,” Choi Ik-soo, chief of the Ulju Police Station, told journalists at a briefing. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Sadly one of the USFK servicemembers who helped rescue a family in Songtan from a building fire has passed away from an injury she received during the rescue:

The 731st Air Mobility Squadron at Osan Air Base has honored an airman who died from injuries sustained while helping save a family from a burning building.

Staff Sgt. Cierra Rogers died May 20 shortly after arriving at her follow-on duty station in Florida. She was 26 years old. Rogers, who was credited with being the first airman to arrive at the scene, was hospitalized in the days following the April 29 fire in South Korea’s Songtan district and required surgery.  (……..)

“This beauty was in the hospital when everyone was being interviewed,” friend Kris Murray wrote in a tribute post on Facebook. “[Cierra] remained calm and told the mom how to breathe in the smoke, then convinced the mom to throw her three babies out the window to safety where firefighters and a few airman and soldiers waited to catch them. Cierra got very hurt in the process while sliding down some wires and kicking a window in.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but this article from the Osan AB public affairs office does describe Staff Sergeant Rogers’ action during the fire and how she sustained the injury:

taff Sgt. Cierra Rogers, 731st Air Mobility Squadron administrative assistant, was among the five individuals trapped inside the apartment. When they began to smell smoke and noticed a fire broke out, she reacted quickly to help the mother and her children get out the building.

Rogers explained that after realizing they could not go through the main doors, she kicked through one of the windows leading to the apartment’s patio, which provided the only means of escape from the smoke and growing flames.

“From then I made a decision because you can easily die from choking on smoke,” said Rogers.

Despite the deep laceration she suffered from kicking through the glass, Rogers continued to push forward to get herself and the family closer to safety.

She looked down on the alley below. She attempted to scale down the building using wires near the patio. A few steps down she slid down the wire, falling 15 feet to the ground.

Several service members quickly rushed to her side to provide self aid buddy care until first responders arrived.  [Osan PAO]

You can read more at the link, but condolences to her friends and family for their loss.