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(2nd LD) Police probe cause of deadly warehouse fire
ICHEON, South Korea, Jan. 8 (Yonhap) -- Police were Tuesday trying to find the cause of a fire that killed 40 people and injured 10 others in a refrigerated warehouse south of Seoul with many of the dead identified as ethnic Korean workers from China.
The deadly blaze in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, ripped through the two-story warehouse under construction on Monday, as 57 workers were installing refrigeration systems and doing other work to prepare for the building's opening this weekend, police said.
Police have found the badly burnt bodies of 40 people, only 14 of whom have so far been identified. Ten others were hospitalized with burn injuries and toxic gas inhalation, while the remaining seven were rescued or able to escape at the onset of the accident, they said.
"The investigation will concentrate on the basement floor, its passageway and ventilation facility where many of the dead were found," a police officer said.
Most of the dead were underpaid daily wage earners whose shift starts at predawn hours. A total of 13 ethnic Koreans from China were missing and presumed to be among the burnt bodies, with a family of seven feared dead in the fire.
"How on earth can this happen? Our entire family was exterminated overnight," Kang Seong-mun, 68, who lost his sister Sun-nyeo and six other relatives, cried.
President-elect Lee Myung-bak paid an impromptu visit to the scene, and Foreign Minister Song Min-soon planned to send a condolence letter to his Chinese counterpart. The ministry will also dispatch its top ambassador for consular affair, Gabriel Oh, to the scene to help proceed the victims' funerals and compensation, ministry officials said.
South Korean human rights activists will launch a joint organization to devise compensation measures for the migrant workers from China, said Pastor Kim Hae-seong, head of the non-governmental Association of Movement for Foreign Migrant Labor.
Compensation measures are not yet clear. The warehouse, owned by the logistics company Korea 2000, is covered by a 15 billion won (US$16.3 million) insurance contract with South Korea's LIG Insurance Co., Ltd., but the payment mostly applies for property damage rather than human casualties.
"It'd be impossible for each victim to be provided with more than 10 million won (US$10,600) for that kind of an insurance," said an LIG official on condition of anonymity.
The presidential office vowed to "do all the things it should" to identify the cause of the fire and respond to the victims, said Cheon Ho-seon, the Cheong Wa Dae spokesman.
Survivors were not aware of what directly caused the three consecutive explosions at 10-second intervals at 10:45 a.m. Monday, as they were outside the basement machine room, where 35 out of the 40 dead were found and which is presumed to be the origin of the blaze, police said.
Unidentified bodies -- of 26 persons -- were linked to those missing in the list of employees provided by the warehouse owner. DNA tests were being conducted on the rest of the 30 bodies in order to identify them, but the work will take at least two weeks, according to the police.
A joint team of police officers, investigators from the National Institute of Scientific Investigation and government officials from gas and electric agencies were questioning survivors and the warehouse managers to find the cause of the fire.
The warehouse was poorly equipped and prone to a man-made disaster, they said. Its basement, twice as large as a football field, had only two exit doors. A 224-ton water tank and sprinklers were useless because "they were destroyed at the same time when explosions destroyed the building," a firefighter said. Most workers inside the warehouse were installing pipes and arranging electric facilities at that time.
Some police officers suspected explosions stemmed from flammable gas that was presumably ignited by stray sparks from a welder's torch. Workers had been welding in the building, which contained thinners and polyurethanes.
Burning toxic chemicals, coupled with fear of more explosions, made it difficult for firefighters to enter the building and extinguish the blaze through Monday night.
Survivor Ahn Sun-shik, 51, recalled experiencing a backdraft as he escaped. "As soon as I heard one of my colleagues shout 'Fire!' I felt I was being sucked back in by a gust of wind."
Ahn said he ran frantically from the scene, and heard the sound of a bang when he was 50 meters from the warehouse. He added that he had no chance to take any action to save his colleagues.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)
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