At least 27 people were killed yesterday and a dozen missing following a fierce blaze in a South Korean refrigerated warehouse, firefighters said.
"So far we have recovered 27 bodies. The death toll is expected to rise as a dozen workers are feared dead in the basement," Woo Sung-shik, a fire department official here, told reporters.
About 200 firefighters were sent into the basement of the two-story building in Icheon after the fire was put out, he said.
PHOTO: AFP
"The rescue work has been hampered by toxic fumes but we are trying hard to recover the remaining bodies," Woo said.
The fire apparently started in the warehouse basement, where workers were using flammable materials, other officials said.
Witnesses that there were explosions from the basement of the cold storage facility, which had been under construction when the fire broke out.
At the time of the blaze, 57 people were working in the warehouse, Yonhap news agency said.
Firefighters said 21 workers managed to escape the fire, with 10 sent to hospital for burns or for fume inhalation.
The exact cause of the fire was not known, but investigators believe that inflammable vapor from the basement's engine room might have caught fire, setting off consecutive explosions, Yonhap said.
"There were loud bangs, flames shot up and one seriously burned woman ran into my restaurant crying for help," Lee Yong-seon, 43, who runs a restaurant near the warehouse, was quoted as saying.
Korea 2000, owner of the warehouse, told Yonhap that workers had been welding in the building, which contained spare polyurethane material used for flooring.
"We suspect flammable gas, probably caused by work with thinners and polyurethanes, exploded with a spark," an unnamed firefighter told cable news network YTN.
More than 100 fire engines and 440 firefighters, backed by hundreds of police, tackled the blaze.
Authorities evacuated hundreds of residents from the nearby town.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to