On June 29, 1995, the Mitho department store in South Korea suddenly collapsed. Within 20 seconds, the 5-story department store was plunged into the 4th floor underground, with a total of 502 deaths and nearly 1,000 people being injured to varying degrees. It was the worst casualty in South Korea in peacetime. What exactly is the cause of the incident? Is it a natural or man-made disaster? Were there any warnings before this accident? In this article, we jointly demystify the major accident of Mitutoyo Department Store in South Korea.
At the end of the 20th century, there was a large department store in the Seocho district of Seoul, South Korea, called Mitutoyo Department Store. In 1988, Seoul, South Korea, benefited from the convening of the Olympic Games and entered a golden period of development. Major department stores and integrated trade center buildings have sprung up like mushrooms. Sanfeng Department Store was built with this trend. The place where it is located was originally an old landfill. After the completion of Sanfeng Department Store, the daily passenger flow reached 40,000 people, and the weekly turnover exceeded 4 million US dollars.
No one expected that such a bustling shopping mall would become a burial place for hundreds of people. On June 29, 1995, Mitutoyo Department Store was as lively as ever. Because it is almost the weekend, there are many people visiting the mall, and the opening of Mitutoyo Department Store is about to turn 5 years old, and the mall activities are very hot. From the morning when it was open until five o'clock in the afternoon, the crowd did not stop.
However, at 6 p.m., the building's automatic alarm device suddenly sounded a sharp alarm. Then the building began to shake violently. Stones kept falling to the ground on the roof, and the air conditioning unit fell from the atrium, smashing into the floor slab, instantly crushing the pillars supporting the entire building. The shopping crowd and the mall salesmen fled in fright, and the entire mall changed from a bustling and peaceful scene to a purgatory on earth.
All this change occurred in just 20 seconds, and before everyone could react, the entire building collapsed completely, the mall floor fell to the fourth floor underground, and more than 1500 people were buried in the rubble, covered by hard reinforced concrete. The crowd on the streets of Seocho District was stunned by this scene. Disasters happened so quickly that people forgot to cry. A few people on the street rushed to the scene first, trying to rescue the victims of the disaster. In the outermost layer of the ruins, passers-by also rescued some of the slightly luckier survivors.
Others began to call the police and ask for help. The rescue team received the news and rushed to the scene to carry out the rescue. The police then rushed to the scene and set up a cordon. The rescue effort was quite difficult. Even the professional rescue team has hardly encountered such a scene, the entire shopping mall is deep into the ground, the number of people buried, the location of the people, is very certain. And because of the fear of a secondary collapse caused by the bulldozing opportunities used by the rescue, the rescue team can only carry out the rescue by hand.
The collapse of Mitho Department Store soon appeared in the news of various countries and became the focus of the world's attention. Some countries have donated relief materials and relief equipment to South Korea. South Korea's professional rescue team uses high-tech detectors donated by the United States and Japan, such as heat detectors and sonar detectors, to detect the ruins in real time. This high-tech detector can monitor whether there are survivors under the building and determine the location of survivors. After determining the location of the trapped person, the rescuer will use a long pipe to reach the location of the trapped person, and then transport outside air, water and food.
Finally, with various professional tools, a life channel was carved out of the ruins to rescue the trapped people. Within two days of the accident, nearly 50 trapped people were rescued through this method. The rescue team considered that there were cars parked in the underground mall, and the collapse of the building may cause the car to leak oil, which in turn will cause a fire. Therefore, while the rescue work was unfolding, the fire brigade kept sprinkling water and moisturizing the disaster site.
The disaster was the worst casualty in south Korea in peacetime. The day after the accident, the South Korean government sent troops to the scene to support. On the outskirts of the mall, a large crowd of people, most of them families of the victims, slept on the streets, hoping that rescue workers would bring them good news. But on the day after the rescue, more than 200 people had been identified and the death toll was expected to rise.
One survivor revealed the scene of the disaster to the crowd. At that time, the mall siren sounded, and before the survivor realized what was going on, he saw dust and rubble falling from the roof. She struggled to stay calm, seeking life in the panic. But when she tried to escape, she was hit by a piece of concrete and mixed up on the spot. When she regained consciousness again, she found herself the lucky survivor of the disaster.
Why did such a bustling department store suddenly collapse? The first reason that comes to mind: earthquakes. But the Korea Seismological Bureau said no quakes were detected. If it wasn't an earthquake, could it be a gas explosion? Through several days of on-site rescue, the rescue team did not find any traces of ignition and explosion at the scene. Isn't it a natural disaster, is it a man-made disaster? Will there be a terrorist attack?
This conjecture has attracted the attention of the South Korean police. However, after an investigation of the scene, no clues were found to be committed by terrorists. Assuming that there are terrorists committing crimes that can cause such a large collapse of the mall, there must be enough bombs. No bomb fragments were found at the scene. The police once again ruled out terrorists.
Accident investigations are carried out at the same time as accident investigations. The accident has been going on for two weeks, and it was finalized that a total of 501 people died in the accident. However, the cause of the accident is still an unsolved mystery, and reporters and media from all over the world have speculated about the matter. The South Korean police resisted the pressure of public opinion and continued to investigate the truth. Finally, the police found some clues on the design drawings of the accident. This accident is not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster. The "criminals" are not terrorists, but the "builders" of this building!
When the police searched for the cause of the accident, they found the blueprint of the mall. At a cursory glance, there was nothing wrong with that. Sanfeng Department Store is an ordinary "flat" structure, easy to build, but the construction planning requirements are high. Just when the police wanted to abandon the pursuit in this direction, a detail caught the attention of the police: the diameter of the load-bearing column on the construction drawing was reduced by 20 cm. Load-bearing columns are the life pillars of the building, and a fraction of a minute will affect the safety of the entire building.
The police continue to pursue. The investigation found that the entire building was originally designed as a four-storey apartment or office building, and the underground was also four floors. However, the real estate owner changed his mind temporarily. He believes that Seoul, South Korea, has entered a critical period of development, which happens to be in a prime location in Seoul. If you build it into a department store, you must make a lot more money than an office building. The boss of Sanfeng immediately ordered the construction team to change the construction project and build the site into a department store.
Building a department store is more difficult and demanding than building an office building or apartment. In pursuit of quick interests, Boss Sanfeng simply did not have time to take care of so much. In order to save money, he asked the construction drawings to use the original scheme. The construction unit immediately retorted: "It is very dangerous to do this. In the end, the quarrel broke out, and the boss of Sanfeng simply fired the original construction unit and let the enterprise under his name carry out the construction.
According to the construction requirements of the mall at that time, it was necessary to have four retail floors. The owner of Sanfeng directly added an extra floor of restaurants to the roof. The buildings and appliances involved in the construction of the restaurant make the building bear more load. After the mall was fully completed, the owner of Sanfeng found that the overall building forgot to embed air conditioning. How can a mall without air conditioning become a high-end shopping mall. Therefore, the boss of Sanfeng ordered his construction team to immediately configure a set of air-conditioning equipment.
However, because this air conditioning equipment is added later, it is very inconsistent with the structural design of the mall. The construction team racked its brains to make seven changes to the shopping mall building. These modifications have buried huge hidden dangers for the collapse of shopping malls. The police found that on the design drawings, Sanfeng Department Store actually adopted a beamless building cover structure, relying on floor slabs and columns to bear the load. Once the building collapses, it will cause a chain reaction, causing the floor to collapse in an instant.
On the day of the accident, at eight o'clock in the morning, Manager Li went to work at the mall. When he walked to the office, he found a note on the desk in the office. The note was left by the mall patrol. On the note, it was written: Around two o'clock in the morning, the sound of a wall cracking on the roof could be heard. Manager Li put down the note and walked slowly to the roof. He noticed some cracks in the roof, but didn't take it seriously. There has been a water leak on the south side of the mall, and he is not surprised.
Around 10:00 p.m., the mall received complaints from shops. On a pillar inside the restaurant on the fifth floor, a huge crack appeared, almost able to accommodate a fist. The internal structure of the wall can be seen almost clearly. Manager Li decided to temporarily close the restaurant, and also specially told the restaurant staff and staff, this matter must not be publicized, can not affect the reputation of the mall.
Towards noon, the jewelry department heard some clicks. The staff on the fourth floor recalled that a rumbling sound could be heard from the roof or somewhere. But because of their busy schedule, they don't have time to think about what the source of the sound is. However, the sound occasionally lasted. Employees report the situation to their supervisors. The supervisor then fed the situation back to the boss of Sanfeng. The boss of Sanfeng held an emergency meeting and asked the engineer to check the situation of the mall building.
The boss of Sanfeng is thinking about assessing the situation of the mall. At 4 p.m., the evaluator gave a satisfactory answer from the boss: the situation is not dangerous, and the mall can be repaired after it closes. As a result, Mitutoyo Mall continues to be open. Although the employees felt very strange in the rumble, no one dared to disobey the boss's intentions. The time came to 5 p.m., at which time, the urban office workers began to leave work one after another.
The crowd in Mitho Mall gradually increased, entering the peak time of the day. People come and go, picking up their favorite items at the mall. They didn't notice anything about the cracks in the walls of the mall getting bigger and bigger. With the increase in the flow of people, the air conditioning load of the shopping mall increases. The restaurants on the fifth floor are getting livelier and the temperature in the mall is rising. Under this multiple influencing factors, the wall has entered a completely uncontrollable state. Collapse, unstoppable.
At 5:52 p.m., the time of disaster struck. The mall alarm makes a harsh sound. The lively crowd fell silent in an instant, and the rumble was clearly visible. A loud rumbling sound was accompanied by falling rubble and dirt blocks. Then, a large pile of air conditioning equipment fell from the fifth floor in the center of the mall. The real catastrophe has only just begun, when people react and want to escape. Five floors snapped and collapsed downwards like a pancake.
When Sanfeng collapsed, there were about 2,000 people in the building, most of whom were housewives. They were supposed to buy their favorite meat dishes for their families and go home to cook a delicious dish, but unfortunately they were suddenly attacked. Some people even leave this world permanently, and countless families are broken. The whole accident was supposed to have an opportunity to remedy. From the beginning of the note in the morning, to the continuous leakage, ringing, vibration and other phenomena, the mall owner could have stopped the mall from opening during this time period.
However, in order to make huge profits, they chose to block the news, or chose to turn a blind eye and did not evacuate the masses in time, resulting in this disaster. Sanfeng boss Li Zhen (zun) earns a lot of money. Lee had served in the military and later became a subordinate of South Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong-bi. After becoming a celebrity around Kim Jong-bi, Lee used his connections to enter the real estate industry.
During the construction of the Sanfeng Mall, Li Hao accepted bribes many times. The interests have completely blinded his eyes, and he does not know how he feels when he faces the victim's family? On December 27, 1995, the Seoul (now Seoul) court in South Korea sentenced Lee to 10 and a half years in prison for criminal negligence, and the remaining people involved in the case of several years in prison. Those involved also included a number of government officials.
Compared with more than 500 victims, Li's 10-and-a-half-year sentence can almost be described as "understated". In 2003, Li Paid a total of about US$330 million in compensation to all the victims, and later filed a lawsuit with the court accordingly, and the sentence was successfully reduced on appeal. After the case, urban construction bureau experts conducted a unified quality inspection of all buildings in Seoul, and nearly one-seventh of the buildings needed to be rebuilt on the high floor. I don't know how many more Li Wei have planted one "sweet trap" after another under the huge net of the city.
Desire creates an abyss, and corruption breeds disaster. The case of South Korea's Sanfeng Mall made us deeply understand from the side why Chairman Mao resolutely proposed "not to learn from Li Zicheng" and resolutely curb the problem of corruption. Some small details often brew up big disasters, and officials usually start from small things, start from themselves, and be strict with themselves, so as to prevent them from falling into the abyss of desire and avoid disasters.