 |
| The exterior walls of part of an apartment complex under construction in Gwangju's Seo District collapsed on Jan. 11, raining down debris onto the road below. Newsis |
By Ko Dong-hwan
Korea's National Fire Agency has rebuffed a politician's suggestion to call an Israeli intelligence unit to spur on the ongoing rescue mission at the site of a collapsed apartment under construction in the southwestern city of Gwangju.
The site of a partially destroyed apartment building that killed one worker and trapped another five inside is currently in unstable condition. Even a minor impact from maneuvering a construction machine could cause the building to collapse further. A 140-meter-high tower crane leaning against the building, which could fall if the building deteriorates further, is at the center of this dire situation.
The building is in extremely precarious condition and that is what makes the rescue mission more difficult; it's not actually a lack of technical support or equipment that is the problem, the agency said on Jan. 15.
"Unit 9900 are an Israeli military intelligence unit who often use three-dimensional imaging techniques to compare the collapsed building's interior before and after the accident and then use that to estimate the possible locations of the missing people," the fire agency said, referring to the Israeli unit, which collects imagery intelligence from aerial images as well as by satellite. They helped in a rescue mission at a collapsed apartment building in Florida in June 2021. "They don't actually go into the building to rescue people. They just suggest to the rescuers where the missing people might be located."
In order not to cause the crane to fall, the agency has only sent rescue dogs and their handlers, as well as 17 rescuers supported by drones to find the trapped workers.
Once the crane is successfully removed from the site and debris from the exterior walls cleared, then the over 200 rescuer workers and their equipment will be allowed in to search for the remaining workers, the agency said.
Ahn Cheol-soo, the candidate for the March presidential election representing the People's Party, suggested on Facebook on Jan. 14 that the central government had requested the Israeli government to send Unit 9900 to support the Gwangju rescue mission. He said that "out of a deep sense of desperation," he had asked the Israeli ambassador in Korea to send the unit to Korea, to which the ambassador responded by saying that he began looking into the matter.
"Our rescuers boast world-class urban search-and-rescue skills, as we are graded according to the highest classification ("heavy") in the United Nations," the National Fire Agency said, making clear that they will not go along with Ahn's idea.
The exterior walls covering the 23rd to 38th floors of the building in the city's Seo District crumbled on Jan. 11, putting the construction on hold. HDC Hyundai Development, the construction operator, faced a heavy public backlash, as they were also behind the demolition project of a building in the same city seven months ago that collapsed onto a road and hit a moving bus, killing nine people.
