South Korea is notorious for ignoring safety measures to prevent fires, occupational hazards and other accidents. Friday's fire at a cold storage warehouse reminds us how important it is to abide by safety regulations and install appropriate firefighting equipment. The blaze broke out in a warehouse basement in Icheon, 60km southeast of Seoul, killing four workers and injuring two others.
It is regrettable that storage operators have failed to learn a painful lesson from a tragedy which gutted a similar refrigerated warehouse in the same city in January, claiming 40 workers. The two accidents have much in common. Welding sparks caused both fires. The structure of the two warehouses was similar in that they were highly vulnerable to fire. Walls were set up with flammable panels, while each room had no windows, with workers locked inside by a shutter.
Police said that a total of 3,950 sprinklers were set up in the basement and the first and second floors. They did not work. No alarm bell rang to warn workers inside storage rooms of the fire. In the January accident, the warehouse operator turned off sprinkler switches and removed firewalls in order to expedite welding work without paying heed to safety regulations.
In short, the fire tragedies were triggered by a lack of safety measures and the failure to operate fire prevention equipment. It is safe to say that they were manmade disasters that could have been avoided if proper safety measures had been taken. It is nonsense that the operators just set up fire prevention equipment only to pass the safety checks conducted by municipal authorities.
Besides, the authorities must have neglected their supervision of such fire-prone warehouses. How could inspectors approve the use of the structures, which were not properly equipped with fire prevention devices? Suspicions are growing that there might have been corrupt ties between inspectors and warehouse operators.
Whenever such a tragedy occurs, local authorities and the central government vow to take bold steps to enforce stricter safety regulations. But they have only proven that they were long on words but short on action to prevent disasters. Against this backdrop, it is not strange that the country is again and again hit by the recurrence of fires and other safety-related accidents. We should no longer tolerate negligence of disaster prevention measures in a bid to avoid loss of life and property.