Collapse of the Sampoong building

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The collapsed Sampoong building

The collapse of the Sampoong building on June 29, 1995 in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul was the worst man-made disaster in South Korea to date . The north wing of the building, in which the “Sampoong” department store occupied the largest area, collapsed within seconds. 502 people died in the disaster, 937 were injured - some seriously - and six people were ultimately registered as missing. The causes of the collapse were found to be the use of unsuitable building materials , deliberate disregard of building regulations and faulty building construction in later investigations . The collapse was indirectly facilitated by negligent controls by the building supervision authorities and the bribery of officials.

prehistory

In 1987, the Sampoong group began to cultivate an area of ​​approximately one square kilometer that had previously been used as a garbage dump . Originally a four aboveground should projectiles extensive office complex formed. But the company chairman and later owner Lee Jun changed his plans in favor of a shopping center . Some of the supporting pillars of the building fell victim to the installation of escalators . When the contracted contractor refused to make these changes, the construction contract was withdrawn. Lee Jun had the buildings constructed by his own construction company, which completed the work in late 1989. The building complex consisted of a north and a south wing with an atrium in between . There was parking space for cars and technical rooms in the four basement floors . Sports and leisure facilities were concentrated in the south wing and the shopping center in the north wing. The luxurious Sampoong department store opened its doors to the public on July 7, 1990 and received a great deal of customer feedback. An estimated 40,000 people from the surrounding affluent district did their shopping there every day.

A few months later, the four-storey building was raised by a fifth floor, which originally had a full-area roller skating rink, but later there was space for eight restaurants. When a design office pointed out that due to the statics , another floor was not possible, Lee's order was withdrawn from the office and passed on to an in-house company. In restaurants, as in traditional Korean restaurants, guests should be able to sit on the floor. Therefore, it was the concrete slab an additional floor heating laid and molded, whereby the previously scheduled load of the structure further increased. In addition, the building air conditioning was improved by a system on the roof that exceeded the calculated load limit of the supporting structure by four times.

Sign and collapse

In April 1995, cracks appeared in the ceiling of the fifth floor of the north wing. Lee and his management responded by moving sales and stores from this floor to the basement. A few days before the collapse, a small leak in a gas pipe had to be sealed. Shortly afterwards, a restaurant visitor was completely soaked from a water pipe that had been laid in the ceiling and burst through the cracks. By the morning of June 29, 1995, the number of cracks on the fifth floor had increased sharply. Employees informed the department store management about warped ceilings and crumbling plaster on the restaurant floor. Five hours before the collapse, the first of several popping noises could be heard from the upper floors because the vibrations from the air conditioning had further enlarged the cracks in the floor slabs. The floor was then closed by management and the air conditioning switched off. At this point in time, the cracks in the floors had expanded to a width of up to 10 cm. Construction professionals were asked to look at the building and, after a cursory examination, came to the conclusion that there was a risk of collapse. However, the department store management did not want to close the store or order an evacuation in a crisis meeting because the number of customers in the building was unusually high and the day's sales potential would be lost. As a precaution, the executives themselves left their premises. Employees or customers were not informed about the danger situation.

When the ceiling on the fourth floor dropped at 5 p.m., department store employees blocked access for customers to the floor. When cracking noises could be heard in the building at 5:50 p.m., an alarm was triggered by employees and customers were asked to vacate the building. An estimated 2,000 people were staying there at that time. At around 5:55 p.m. the roof structure gave way and the air conditioning fell on the already overloaded fifth floor, which triggered a chain reaction . The falling load could not be supported by the floor below, also because some load-bearing concrete pillars were weakened by the installation of the escalators. Within twenty seconds, all floors collapsed successively into the basement. Well over 1,500 people were trapped in the rubble and hundreds were killed. The property damage was later estimated at the equivalent of 216 million US dollars.

Toxic smoke billowed out of the rubble. Fires were caused by leaking gasoline from the tanks of the vehicles destroyed in the underground car park. Many of the collapse victims were female. On the one hand, they were employed as clerks in the shopping center, on the other hand, housewives ran errands in the grocery department in the basement, which offered reduced prices in the late afternoon.

Rescue operations

Rescue workers at the collapse site

The first rescue workers were at the scene of the accident just a few minutes after the collapse. Transporting the injured and shocked to the hospitals was difficult due to the rush hour. The forces were also supported by rescue helicopters . It was not until the following day that cranes and heavy clearance equipment were brought to the scene. About 3,000 helpers - police officers, firefighters and soldiers - searched the rubble for several days. Hundreds of volunteers also took part, 17 of whom the police arrested for looting. The United States Army stationed in the country helped with a rescue team that was supposed to locate victims. The rescue team of a mine was also brought to the South Korean capital to contribute their expertise to the rescue. Because other parts of the building threatened to collapse and the rescuers themselves were in danger, the authorities announced that they would stop the rescue operations, which, however, triggered massive protests from the relatives of the victims, who suspected survivors in the rubble. Thereupon the building component, which was in acute danger of collapse, was secured before the rescue measures were continued. After a week of searching, the focus was on removing debris with the help of up to 15 cranes and several forklifts, although the crews paid careful attention to any people trapped alive.

Two days after the collapse, some officials were of the opinion that there were no longer any survivors to be reckoned with and that further work could therefore no longer be carried out under a rescue aspect. However, survivors were rescued from cavities with only minor injuries several days after the building collapse. On July 9, a 21-year-old student, on July 11, an 18-year-old woman, and the last survivor on July 16, 19-year-old department store worker Park Seung-hyun ( 박승현 ; 朴 昇 aus) were rescued from the rubble.

Root cause research

Initial suspicions about the cause of the accident went in the direction of a gas explosion, as two such explosions had previously occurred in the city. A terrorist attack originating in North Korea was also discussed. Other experts suspected the cause in the unstable terrain on which the building complex stood. Debris investigations, however, quickly revealed that an inferior concrete mix of cement and seawater and poor reinforced concrete in the ceilings and walls had played a role.

Later on, the construction technology used turned out to be another weak point. In some cases, it had been decided not to support the stability of the concrete pillars with transverse beams on which the concrete ceiling could rest. According to the plans, the concrete supports were only built with a diameter of 60 cm instead of the required 80 cm. In addition, only eight instead of the calculated 16 required reinforcement bars were installed per column, which greatly reduced the load-bearing capacity . The subsequent installation of safety precautions had also contributed to the collapse. In order to prevent a possible fire from spreading from floor to floor, protective walls were put up around all escalators. For this purpose, the builders cut into the concrete supports , which weakened their load-bearing cross-section.

All of these factors, including the installation of the fifth floor with its restaurants and their furnishings, led to the building collapse. Although the originally planned load was greatly exceeded, the building withstood five years. What ultimately caused it to collapse were the consequences of relocating the three air conditioning units installed on the roof (87 tonnes total mass with coolant), as neighbors had complained about their noise in 1993. The building management had the devices moved to the east side using rollers instead of a crane, which destabilized the roof surface. Cracks formed on the roof around the supporting pillars. Due to the insufficiently dimensioned punching shear reinforcement, the flat ceiling slab sank so that over the years the column heads emerged from the top of the roof. The column "5e" suffered full damage, which led to the formation of cracks on the fifth floor. Another problem with the air conditioning was its vibration, survivors said. If the air conditioning was switched on during these two years, the existing cracks increased each time. When the system was shut down on the day of the disaster, the structure was already irreparably damaged, so that pillar “5e” gave way.

Criminal prosecution

Lee Jun, 73, was found guilty of gross negligence and bribery in the criminal trial and was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison by the court. His son, 42-year-old department store manager Lee Han-sang, received seven years' imprisonment for the same reason. Twelve city officials involved in construction supervision were found guilty of bribery, toleration and concealment of illegal modifications and poor building construction. They were also sentenced to imprisonment for complicity, including a previous administrator from Seocho-gu District. A number of executives from the Sampoong department store and the construction company responsible for completing the building were also convicted.

Continue

The catastrophe caused many skepticism and fears to grow as to whether other construction projects in the country might also be poorly executed. South Korea experienced a construction boom in the 1980s and 1990s during its economic boom. The building collapse was another incident in a series of catastrophes which, with the collapse of Seongsu Bridge on October 21, 1994 (32 dead) and two gas explosions in Seoul (113 dead), made many people doubt the safe construction. The authorities checked their safety regulations after the Sampoong incident and tightened construction supervision. The corruption discovered also gave rise to further measures.

Others

  • The disaster is dealt with as a background event in the South Korean film Traces of Love .
  • The site of the "Sampoong" department store was rebuilt in the years that followed. In Yangjae Citizens Forest a monument commemorating the victims of the disaster.
  • In the documentary series Seconds From Disaster of National Geographic Channel , the result is concerned Superstore collapse - Buried Alive - The disaster of Seoul detail with the disaster.
  • In the Korean Netflix series Reply 1994 , this catastrophe is shown briefly.
  • In the Korean series Just between Lovers , this catastrophe and the creation of the memorial are briefly shown.

literature

Web links

Commons : Collapse of the Sampoong Building  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert J. Delatte Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers . ASCE Press, 2009, ISBN 0-7844-0973-0 , p. 169 (English).
  2. ↑ Handbook of Crisis and Emergency Management , p. 507 (English).
  3. ^ South Korean Department Store Collapses, Killing at least 113 . In: The New York Times , June 30, 1995.
  4. ↑ Dodental instorting Warenhuis kan oplopen tot ruim 250 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) In: Gazet van Antwerpen , July 1, 1995 (Dutch).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / asp.gva.be
  5. ↑ Catched rusty water with the stockings . In: Die Welt , July 17, 1995.
  6. ↑ Department store owner in Seoul convicted . In: Die Welt , December 28, 1995.
  7. ↑ Traces of Love on pride-of-korea.de, February 5, 2008.
  8. ↑ The Sampoong disaster on nuku.de, March 13, 2007.

Coordinates: 37 ° 29 ′ 54 ″  N , 127 ° 0 ′ 48 ″  E