Students of all ages prep for disaster at safety experience center
Students assemble in the lobby of Gwangnaru Safety Experience Center, in front of a very violent mural fit for a PG-13 movie. / Image by Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
Safety has been a supreme but recurrent concern in Korea, as high-profile disasters continue to make headlines each year.
Just this last winter, Korea experienced two shocking fires, the first killing 29 in Jecheon last December and the second claiming 37 lives at a Miryang hospital in January.
The two tragic fires were foreshadowed by another pair of fires close together, back in 1999. First, a fire at the Sealand Youth Training Center killed 23 in June, then in October a fire at an illegal bar in Incheon killed 54. Most of the victims in both cases were underage.
Those two fires led to the opening of safety experience centers across the country. Seoul has two: one at Boramae Park in Dongjak-gu, the other in Children's Grand Park in Gwangjin-gu.
Gwangnaru Safety Experience Center is a fancy government building on the outside, nestled between a fire station and Children's Grand Park. On the inside, it at first seems childish _ indeed, the majority of the center's visitors are school field trippers.
The center has countless exhibits (one website says 20). I sampled five of them, on a visit with members of the Seoul Global Center Quality of Life Monitors, a team of 70 foreign residents from 33 countries.
Our first stop was the typhoon zone. This consisted of a wind tunnel where participants enter under heavy wind conditions, then take cover as the wind picks up. We were told they turned it up to 30 meters per second.
That sounds fast, but I've personally experienced worse. I remember one storm in September 2010 in which Seoul had strong winds and heavy rain. I left my apartment with an umbrella, and got no more than five meters before the wind pushed me back _ to say nothing of the rain, which came at me horizontally and made my umbrella completely useless. I rushed back my apartment, soaked head to toe as if I'd jumped in a lake.
The following year, in July 2011, a storm killed around 69 people nationwide, mainly in Seoul and the surrounding area. But it wasn't rain that killed people, but flash floods and landslides _ one on Mt. Umyeon in southern Seoul killed 18.
A guide said typhoon winds can reach 80 meters per second. In a closed wind tunnel we can experience high winds, but not the accompanying rain or possibly debris.
In the typhoon simulation room, participants face winds up to 30 meters per second. / Photo by Jon Dunbar
Next door is earthquake training, something that has become a cause for concern following the 2016 Gyeongju earthquake and the 2017 Pohang earthquake. Seoul has yet to be hit, but preparations have been taken, including one dramatic large-scale drill at an abandoned apartment complex in Godeok-dong.
I have never experienced earthquake tremors, despite being hypersensitive and paranoid of them. If the ground isn't shaking I wonder if it is or is about to.
Here, participants gather in a kitchen with electricity and gas stove on, and when the shaking begins they have to turn it off, cover their heads and take cover. The whole process feels fun, but its effects are highly stressful. You see people go from having fun to huddling together under a table.
Meanwhile, a video plays on screens surrounding them showing increasingly castastrophic damage. Furniture falls, fires break out, N Seoul Tower collapses.
Afterwards, participants must evacuate through a dark passage littered with debris, not just on the ground, but coming from the walls and hanging from the ceiling. I cheated by turning on my smartphone's flashlight app, something that would likely be available to most people following such an emergency.
A participant stands up during an earthquake simulation, before rushing to the wall to turn off the power. / Photo by Jon Dunbar
The first floor is apparently themed on natural disasters, but a seemingly new feature is ship evacuation. Four years on, traumatic memories of the 2014 ferry Sewol sinking still don't rest easy.
A model of the ship Anjeon-ho (Safety Ship) stands just to the right of the main entrance. It's intended to look fun and cartoonish, but nobody can look at that and not think of the ferry Sewol. As we boarded, the guide made a surprisingly dark joke that we were bound for Jeju Island, the same destination as the Sewol.
This section was entertaining, perhaps too entertaining. The ship is capable of rocking, and a video creates the sense of motion, with a jarring impact as the ship hits a rock. Then participants must put on lifejackets and evacuate down a slide. In reality I doubt there'd be a metal slide like one found on a playground, but the important lessons are deciding when to abandon ship, as well as putting on a lifejacket and the correct posture to ensure safe entry into the water, protecting the head and keeping you from getting a noseful of water.
People practice evacuating a sinking ship in this mockup, named Anjeon-ho (Safety Ship). / Photo by Jon Dunbar
The second floor is more for artificial catastrophe training, such as fire extinguisher use, navigating heavy smoke, CPR and calling 119.
We only visited the first, which excited me as I've never operated a fire extinguisher before.
The room has several sample fire extinguishers pumping out water, which participants aim at a screen showing a kitchen fire. Aiming a continuous stream of water at a target should be no problem for anybody, but like any seemingly simple task, a lot of variables could endanger lives. The woman next to me couldn't get her extinguisher working, forgetting not to pick up her extinguisher by the handle. Due to the structure, the safety pin cannot be removed while the extinguisher is held by the handle.
People practice using fire extinguishers on a simulated fire. / Photo by Jon Dunbar
Believe it or not, children are the best at surviving fires and building evacuation. Don't believe me? Picture a school full of let's say elementary students, and then picture a similar school-shaped office building with let's say half as many people. Which evacuates fastest? The students line up and follow their teachers outside promptly; the office workers wonder if it's a false alarm, consider whether they're exempt from the evacuation, are unwilling to be the first to stand up, want to send a couple more emails.
Even at the safety center, the hundreds of students going by capably lined up and moved from room to room in an orderly fashion (despite being quite loud). Meanwhile, our small group of maybe 20 foreign residents was disorderly; after being told never to run, I dashed around from time to time trying to get in position for photos.
The biggest surprise I got wasn't experiencing earthquake tremors, or surviving the mini-Sewol _ it was one of the most mundane features at the center: fire alarms.
Quick, when there's a fire, how do you ring the alarm? I had never known before what a Korean manual fire alarm looks like, and now knowing it I am shocked. Most foreign fire alarms offer big levers with clear markings, but this thing is just...low-key. It has two buttons, and neither are marked clearly. Due to its shape I always thought it was a fire bell, something you should probably never touch.
The fire alarm on this system is activated by pressing a small black button in the lower half of the red circle.
The third floor is used for rescue training, and the only feature we visited was another major surprise: the descending life line. This is something you may have only ever noticed in hotels, and its use seems impractical and unintuitive. How does it work? Do you just drop a rope and slide down?
There is a thorough instruction guide on most of these devices, but good luck reading that in an emergency.
It turns out, the device is more like a two-sided pulley, with a sling on each end to wear under your armpits. The pulley itself is regulated to control the speed of descent, and all a user needs is to step backwards out of the building and gently drift down to earth, avoiding touching the building itself (something I couldn't resist doing). And since there are slings at either end, once one person lands, the next person can use the other sling to ride down, sending the first sling up for a third person, and so on. It is an ingenious device, but one that should never be operated without a couple minutes of training.
Riding it down is a terrifying and uncomfortable experience. We only went down one floor to safe pads, but I have a similar kit at my own fifth-floor home I'd be more afraid to use. And these things are intended for use up to the 10th floor. I didn't get the chance to ask how I could escape my building with both of my cats.
Two people practice evacuating using a descending line. / Photo by Jon Dunbar
Safety training often seems childish because children are the most frequent, and best, trainees. But safety is the responsibility of everybody regardless of age, and adults should not feel excluded.
During our visit, we also came across a team sent from Walkerhill Hotel. That should comfort hotel guests; who wouldn't want hotel staff to be trained in safety and evacuation?