In less than three months after the'Icheon Logistics Fire' that took 38 people's lives, another large fire broke out at Yongin's Logistics Warehouse.

Logistics warehouses are places where, due to their nature, the space is sealed, and there are many cases that are vulnerable to flames, and if there is a fire, poisonous gas spreads in an instant and risks of life and danger.

Fire started on the 4th basement level of SLC Logistics Center located in Cheil-ri, Yangji-ri, Yangin-gu, around 8:29 am today (21st).

It was known that the operation of loading frozen food on a truck was in full swing on the floor, and suddenly, smoke spread with the sound of a'pump' from the truck, and it was known that a fire broke out.

Five of the dead were on the 4th basement floor and suffered a bowel movement.

Fire officials believe that they were unable to leave the scene as a result of a sudden explosion of fire.

It is also possible that the dead were trapped in smoke and were unable to evacuate due to the poorly ventilated basement.

If you look at the outer wall of the actual distribution center, you can see the blackish trace around the area where the smoke came out.

Firefighters are known to have devoted considerable time to fighting fires and saving lives with the black smoke that covered the buildings.

The fire was first in the middle of two hours, at about 10:30 am (the stage where the flames could be controlled and there was no fear of expanding combustion), but the building was still full of smoke.

This fire was a large-scale fire in the warehouse that was repeated three months after the Icheon Hanik Express fire.

Although the cause of fire has not been investigated yet, it is difficult to compare with Icheon, but the risk of toxic smoke spreading in seconds in a closed space called a warehouse is the same.

The fire in Icheon was caused by the burning of urethane foam during the welding operation, and most of the dead were suffocated and unable to evacuate the toxic fumes that swallowed the building.

Professor Choi Young-hwa of the Department of Fire Safety Management, Daegu Health University said, "In order to keep frozen food at a constant temperature, it is inevitable to use a lot of insulation materials. As the smoke soared through the stairs to the ground, the evacuation route was also blocked, so evacuation at the time would not have been easy.”

The SLC Logistics Center was completed in December 2018 with 4 stories above the ground and 5 stories below ground with a total area of ​​115,000 square meters.

(Photo = Yonhap News)