After that terrible, toxic warehouse fire last week in Incheon I started paying attention to firetraps around town. Happily and luckily I am not working in a factory.
This one caught my eye, over at Lotte Mart, which is equivalent to a Super Walmart--over eight exits were all chained and locked shut except for one small door. We were trying to figure out why everyone was streaming in and out through one little door but the chain made it all clear.
At least we had an exit though, in Incheon they were not so lucky.
This story was big news all of last week, and even more interesting was that the paper ran stories saying things like "no deal yet reached in deaths in warehouse fire." Within days people demanded a firm figure. Today they have one. It is impossible to imagine that a huge legal situation like this in the US would be resolved this quickly. It would be tied up in the courts for years. Probably the fact that most of the dead were migrant laborers from China (and many haven't been identified) greased the wheels a bit.
This one caught my eye, over at Lotte Mart, which is equivalent to a Super Walmart--over eight exits were all chained and locked shut except for one small door. We were trying to figure out why everyone was streaming in and out through one little door but the chain made it all clear.
At least we had an exit though, in Incheon they were not so lucky.
This story was big news all of last week, and even more interesting was that the paper ran stories saying things like "no deal yet reached in deaths in warehouse fire." Within days people demanded a firm figure. Today they have one. It is impossible to imagine that a huge legal situation like this in the US would be resolved this quickly. It would be tied up in the courts for years. Probably the fact that most of the dead were migrant laborers from China (and many haven't been identified) greased the wheels a bit.
The families of the 40 people killed in last week’s warehouse fire are to receive average compensation payments of 240 million won ($256,000) each from the facility’s owner, who faces legal action for allegedly violating safety laws, police said Monday (Jan. 14).
The Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency, which is still questioning the owner of the refrigerated warehouse, who has only been identified by her family name Gong, planned to announce an interim report on what it called the "man-made disaster" later in the day.
Forty people were killed and 10 others injured in the deadly blaze in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, that ripped through the two-story Korea 2000 warehouse under construction last Monday.
Most of the victims were daily wage earners, many of them migrant workers from China, working in unsafe conditions. Among the 40 dead, 19 have yet to be identified.
"The investigation is going to be completed soon, and we are preparing for legal proceedings," Park Hak-geun, head of the investigation team of the provincial police agency, told reporters on Sunday.
The warehouse owner and several managers will be charged with violating fire safety laws, he said. Police allege the heavy casualties were partly caused by faulty safety equipment in the building. The fire originated in a basement boiler room, where 35 dead bodies were found, but the sprinkler system, exit doors and alarms didn’t work. The warehouse managers, in violation of fire prevention laws, had adjusted them to only operate manually to prevent them from bursting in the winter or malfunctioning.
After late-night talks that continued until early Monday, the families of the victims reached a deal with Korea 2000 to receive 240 million won each, with the exception of one family that vowed to file a lawsuit against the warehouse.
The Korean government said it has issued visas to 34 ethic Koreans in China whose relatives were killed or injured in the Incheon fire.
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