70 Evacuated After Fire at 12-Story Songpa Apartment

A fire that broke out on the 23rd of last month at an apartment in Songpa-gu, Seoul, forced about 70 residents to evacuate urgently. At the time of the fire in this aging building, completed in 1979, residents had to assess the situation themselves and escape via the stairs without any separate evacuation announcements. Scorch marks are clearly visible on the apartment's exterior walls around the unit where the fire occurred.

A similar incident occurred just two months prior. In February, a fire at the Eunma Apartment in Gangnam-gu, built in the same year as the Songpa building, resulted in one fatality and three injuries. That apartment also lacked sprinklers.

Concerns are being raised that the absence of sprinklers in both 12-story buildings increased the risk of accidents. The mandatory installation of sprinklers in multi-unit housing was first introduced in 1990 and does not retroactively apply to apartments built before then. It has been found that more than half of all apartment units nationwide operate without sprinklers.

Gong Ha-seong, a professor of fire and disaster prevention at Woosuk University, explained that simple sprinklers can be connected to the water supply to release water from the heads without requiring a separate pump, and automatic dispersal fire extinguishers are inexpensive while providing a certain level of fire suppression effect.