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Originally, in long tunnels, there are places where you can evacuate in the middle in preparation for an accident, but there was no such facility in the soundproof tunnel that caught fire.

As a result, it was difficult for people to get out of the tunnel when the fire broke out, and the damage increased as vehicles got entangled.



Reporter Bae Jun-woo covered this.



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A soundproof tunnel on the 2nd Gyeongin Expressway in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, where a fierce fire swept through.



Smoke still billows from the tangled vehicles.



Most of the vehicles in the accident are confined to one lane.



It's the opposite lane of the truck on fire.



All four vehicles in which the fatalities were found were found in this opposite lane.



Fire trucks and ambulances, which went out to evolution and rescue, also had difficulty entering as the lanes were blocked by damaged vehicles.



In the case of the soundproof tunnel where the accident occurred, a whole section of several hundred meters was built continuously.



[Lee Young-joo/Professor, Department of Fire and Disaster Prevention, University of Seoul: Since it is a continuous tunnel, people have to evacuate a long distance in the process of evacuating...

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In the event of a fire, there is a greater risk that the entire tunnel, which is hundreds of meters long, will be engulfed in fire and smoke.



As it becomes difficult to secure visibility, it may lead to secondary accidents such as collisions.



[Eyewitness: I wouldn't have come out anyway.

In the middle, the fire was just completely covered.]



Fire officials are not ruling out the possibility of suffocation from smoke inhalation.



[Gong Ha-seong/Professor of Fire and Disaster Prevention, Woosuk University: It's a situation where you can't see at all, and even fireballs fall from above and the amount of toxic gas is enormous, so in fact, even one sip of it makes your body stiff...

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A soundproof tunnel that was normally illuminated, but when a fire broke out, it turned into a dark tunnel where the exit was unknown.



(Video coverage: Kang Dong-chul, video editing: Park Ji-in)