Gas Explosion Injures 11
By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
A gas explosion injured 11 workers at Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, a shipbuilding company in South Jolla Province, Monday morning.
Welding gas leaked through a cover and was ignited by a spark. The accident left a 46-year-old laborer, Moon, with serious injuries while 10 other workers were sent to neighboring hospitals for treatment.
All of the injured were working on an assembled hatch cover of a ship using gas-welding equipment. While some were seriously injured, others suffered slight burns.
There were no gas barrels at the scene of the accident. The laborers were using gas through a pipe that was linked to the main gas storage tank of the ship plant.
Police suspect gas leaked from the pipe and are investigating the exact causes of the accident. In May, two workers at Hyundai Samho were killed in a crane accident.
The crane, 40-meter high and weighing 200 tons, collapsed at the ship assembly plant, killing a 36-year-old operator named Yang and a repairman, identified as Shin.
The company has two kinds of extra-large dry-docks with a building capacity of 1.5 million gross tons per year. The first dock has two Goliath cranes with a maximum load capacity of 600 tons.