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40 die in warehouse fire
07/01/2008 19:01 - (SA)
Seoul - Forty workers died on Monday after a fire and explosions ripped through a nearly completed cold storage warehouse south of the South Korean capital, most of the victims so badly burned they could not immediately be identified.
All of the dead were discovered in the basement of the burned out warehouse, said Kim Jung-geun, a local fire official in Icheon about 80km south of Seoul.
A total of 10 people were injured and taken to hospitals to be treated for burns and smoke inhalation, Kim said. Another seven people at the site at the time of the fire escaped the building.
Among the dead were 13 ethnic Koreans with Chinese nationality, Yonhap news agency reported. Kim and other police and fire officials said they could not confirm that report.
Critical condition
A doctor at Bestian Medical Centre in Seoul, which specialises in burn treatment, said four of the injured were in a critical condition in intensive care with burns to more than 40% of their bodies.
The physician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing patient confidentiality, said one of them was an ethnic Korean from China.
China has a sizable ethnic Korean minority and in recent years some have migrated to South Korea to seek work. Like other foreign migrants, they often end up working in factories or doing difficult and low-paying work that affluent South Koreans have increasingly shunned.
Kim said that the warehouse fire started at 01:45 GMT, though its exact cause remained unclear.
Workers at the site were injecting urethane foam into the walls of the facility in its basement when the fire started, he said.
Fire caused explosions
Kim said it was known, however, that explosions heard at the site were caused by the fire, not the other way around. He said arson was not suspected.
The badly burned condition of the bodies made identification difficult, he said. Only one of the dead had been positively identified so far, he said.
The fire was extinguished late Monday night. None of the more than 500 firefighters who battled the conflagration were injured.
Police were investigating but had to yet to find an exact cause, said a detective working on the case. He asked not to be named as the investigation was still under way.
Cable news channel YTN showed black-clad firefighters battling thick black, brown and white smoke, some of it spewing from underground. Hoses atop fire trucks also shot water toward the building.
Under construction
An official at Korea 2000, a logistics company that owns the facility, said that the building had been under construction and was intended to be used for refrigeration.
The official said workers were applying the final touches when the fire broke out. She requested anonymity, saying company rules prohibit employees from speaking to the media, and offered no other details.
A witness to the fire, identified only by her family name Song, told YTN that there were several huge bangs as the fire broke out, shaking the building and breaking the windows of a building next door.
Fire official Ahn Hye-wan said that the warehouse was located in an industrial district of the Icheon. The closest homes were more than 500 metres away, he said.
Evacuation order
Kim said that an evacuation order had been issued, though he had no figure for how many people were affected.
Icheon, through which some of South Korea's major highways pass, is home to Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest manufacture of computer memory chips.
It was not immediately known what the death toll ranked among the worst fires in South Korea was.
A total of 198 people died and 147 were injured in 2003 in the South Korean city of Daegu when an arsonist ignited a carton filled with gasoline on a six-car subway train.
- AP
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