A fireplace at a lithium battery manufacturing unit close to Seoul on Monday killed at the least 16 staff and left six others lacking, officers mentioned.
The toll from the blaze, one of many deadliest in South Korea in years, was anticipated to rise as rescuers searched the constructing in Hwaseong, 28 miles south of Seoul. Two staff had been hospitalized with critical accidents.
Kim Jin-young, an official with the Hwaseong Hearth Division, mentioned 102 individuals had been working within the manufacturing unit, owned by the battery maker Aricell, when the hearth broke out. Most of the useless and lacking staff had been migrants from China and different international locations, and officers feared that they had been trapped contained in the constructing.
Staff who fled the hearth mentioned it began when a single battery cell caught fireplace, triggering a sequence of explosions amongst a number of the 35,000 lithium battery cells saved on the manufacturing unit’s second flooring, based on Mr. Kim.
Fires can happen in lithium batteries when the within layers are compressed, inflicting a brief circuit. The layers can develop into compressed by a sudden impression, akin to throughout a automobile collision, or by gradual swelling of the batteries by way of common use.
Lithium is a metallic that may retailer giant quantities of power in a small area, which is why it’s enticing as a battery materials. However that additionally means there’s a lot power obtainable to show into warmth and even flames in case of a brief circuit. Lithium battery fires have been a rising downside in the USA and elsewhere, and fires are an industrywide concern for battery producers.
Aricell, the Hwaseong plant’s proprietor, makes batteries which can be usually utilized in operating “good grid” electrical energy networks.
Intense flames, poisonous smoke and the danger of additional explosions hampered firefighters’ efforts to seek for the lacking staff on Monday. Tv footage from the hearth confirmed orange flames and thick clouds of smoke billowing from the manufacturing unit. Footage taken after the fire had been extinguished confirmed the constructing scorched, with its roof caved in.
Greater than 160 firefighters, together with 60 fireplace engines, rushed to comprise the hearth. President Yoon Suk Yeol referred to as on his authorities to “mobilize all obtainable human assets and tools.”
The blaze was the deadliest in South Korea since a hearth at a development web site southeast of Seoul killed 38 individuals in 2020.
Although South Korea is thought for its cutting-edge expertise and manufacturing, the nation has lengthy been tormented by man-made disasters, together with fires.
In 2018, practically 50 individuals, most of them aged sufferers, died inhaling poisonous smoke in a hearth at a hospital that lacked sprinklers. In 2017, 29 individuals had been killed in a hearth at a fitness center and public tub complicated. In 2008, 40 staff, together with migrant staff, died in a hearth at a cold-storage warehouse underneath development.
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