At 18:05 on June 29, 1995, the Sanfeng Department Store, a top shopping mall located in the core area of Seoul, suddenly collapsed. In just 20 seconds, the A-level department store, which was as high as 5 floors, completely collapsed into the ground. It was the peak shopping period and the building was crowded with people. People didn't have time to react to the accident that happened in an instant. 1,500 people were buried in the ruins of the building, of which 937 were seriously injured and 502 died.
This is the most tragic disaster in peacetime in South Korea, and it is also the second largest building collapse accident in the world, second only to the US "911 terrorist attack on " and the Bangladesh building collapse in India. Sanfeng Building suddenly collapsed without any external force. What is the hidden truth behind this? Who is behind the tragedy of Sanfeng Building?
- The collapse of Sanfeng Department Store
Let’s first learn about Sanfeng Department Store. This building is located in Building 1, Seocho District, Seocho District, Seocho District, Seocho City. It is a core commercial district in Seocho City. It has a very superior geographical location, crowded and bustling traffic. The Sanfeng Building was completed in the second half of 1989 and officially opened on July 7, 1990. The entire department store is extremely magnificent, with a wide range of products, including top luxury goods from all over the world, and its target customers are high-income people in Seoul. Since its opening, Sanfeng Department Store has maintained very good performance, with an average daily reception of more than 40,000 people and an average daily turnover of more than 500,000 US dollars.
In fact, two months before the collapse of Sanfeng Building, cracks appeared on the ceiling of the 5th floor of the mall. However, this did not arouse the alert from the shopping mall authorities. After checking the crack, they believed that it would have no effect.
June 29, 1995, the morning of the collapse of the building, Li Yongzhou, the equipment manager of Sanfeng Department Store, found a note on his desk when he was just starting work. The note came from the security staff who worked on night shift last night. The note was that there was a huge noise on the roof last night and there were cracks on the roof. Please pay attention! However, Li Yongzhou did not take this matter seriously. He believed that the building had just passed the government's security inspection and there would be no major problems. As for the crack, Li Yongzhou believes that it was because three large refrigeration equipment that had moved the roof and crushed the roof, which would not have any impact.
At 10 a.m. that day, a fist-sized crack suddenly appeared on a pillar located on the fifth floor of the mall, and the floor next to it also showed obvious sagging. The restaurant owner next to him discovered this problem and informed Li Yongzhou. After Li Yongzhou went to the site to see it, he just hung a warning sign. He also asked everyone not to disclose the relevant situation, worried about affecting the business of the mall.
At 12 noon, there was a noticeable noise in the mall, and many customers heard it and reacted to it. Moreover, there was a significant shaking on the first floor underground. Li Yongzhou began to realize the seriousness of the problem, so he reported to Li Liu, the owner of Sanfeng Department Store.
Li Liu immediately convened the mall management in the mall office to discuss the response plan. He also asked Li Hezhu, a building structure engineer in the mall, to check the building's condition. After the inspection, Li Hezhu told Li Li that the building is now in danger and that the mall must be closed immediately and all personnel must be evacuated. But Li Liu did not adopt this suggestion. He did not want to delay business in , so he chose to take a risk he shouldn't have taken for money. In this way, they lost their last chance!
At 5 pm, the ceiling on the 4th floor of Building A began to sink seriously, and the mall had to close the entire floor, but commercial activities on other floors were still continuing. Until 5:50 pm, there was a loud noise from the rooftop and the ceiling of the entire A Building began to shake violently. At this time, the staff sounded the alarm and began to evacuate customers, but it was too late! 15 minutes later, before most customers had time to leave the mall, a load-bearing column in Building A broke first, and the large air conditioner on the roof fell down together with the ceiling. Immediately afterwards, the floor on the 5th floor also collapsed to the 4th floor, and then collapsed down one by one. Finally, in just 20 seconds, the entire five floors of Building A collapsed into the ground.The 5-story building instantly became a ruin, and the rising dust covered the sky.
Faced with the sudden tragedy, people were frightened. People who witnessed the whole process cried and hugged each other, but they will face even more difficult rescue tasks next. A few minutes after the building collapsed, police cars, fire trucks and ambulances flocked to it. At that time, the scene was in chaos and many passers-by participated in the rescue with bare hands. However, the collapse of the building caused a large amount of cover, and it was extremely difficult to rescue with bare hands. Moreover, there are people under the ruins of the building, and large-scale rescue equipment such as heavy bulldozers cannot be used at all, so the entire rescue process is very slow.
is also facing the danger of building B collapse during the rescue. Building A and B were originally connected together, but now Building A is collapsed and Building B is standing next to it, and there is a risk of collapse at any time. If Building B collapses, rescuers will undoubtedly be buried, and the situation is very critical. So the next morning, the South Korean government announced a suspension of rescue. The decision of completely angered the relatives and friends of the buried crowd. They rushed to the streets to march and demanded that the government resume rescue operations immediately. Eventually, the parade evolved into a violent conflict between the masses and the police.
On the morning of the third day, after locking Building B with a steel cable, the government announced that the rescue operation would be launched again. Rescue teams kept searching for survivors and bodies from under the ruins. It was not until the 7th day that there were no more survivors that the government stopped the search and rescue operation. After this accident, the Korean people were extremely sad and angry. People took to the streets to conduct demonstrations, demanding that the government thoroughly investigate the cause of the collapse of the building and demanding severe punishment of the murderer.
- Causes of the collapse of Sanfeng Department Store
In the face of public anger, the South Korean government commissioned Dankook University Civil Structural Engineering Professor Zhong Lan to investigate the cause of the collapse of the building. After the building collapsed, there were many different opinions about the cause of the collapse. Some said it was caused by a gas explosion, and some said it was caused by a terrorist attack. Zhong Lan checked all the reasons one by one.
First of all, Zhong Lan ruled out the possibility of gas explosion. The collapse of buildings caused by gas explosions usually has obvious burn marks on site, and the scale of combustion will also be very large. However, according to Zhong Lan's investigation on the scene, there were no signs of fire, so the cause of gas explosion was excluded.
Then there was a terrorist attack, because before that, there were two terrorist attacks in South Korea and killed 136 people. Therefore, there is indeed a possibility of terrorist attacks, so terrorist attacks will inevitably place fierce explosives inside the building. Professor Zhong Lan did not find any traces related to the explosion during the investigation, so the terrorist attack factor was also ruled out.
Finally, Professor Zhong locked the investigation direction to the structure of the building itself, and focused on investigating whether the building itself has construction defects. From the beginning, Professor Zhong began to inspect the building materials. He stressed some concrete samples, and the test results showed that the concrete used for building construction met the requirements. Later, Professor Zhong discovered clues while inspecting the building design drawings.
It turns out that the Sanfeng Department Store was located in the beginning, but according to the design drawings, it should have been a 4-story office. However, when the builders were halfway through construction, Sanfeng Group asked them to convert the office building into a shopping mall and add an extra floor on it. The builder at that time refused this request, so Li Liu, the chairman of Sanfeng Group, terminated the construction contract and asked his construction company to continue construction. Finally, the 5-story Sanfeng Department Store was built according to Li Liu's wishes.
Since the mall needs to install escalator , the original office building design drawings did not have this design. In order to meet the installation needs of escalator, multiple load-bearing columns were cancelled, resulting in serious insufficient load-bearing capacity of the entire building. In addition, the 5th floor of the mall originally had an ice rink built, but it was later changed to 8 restaurants. When opening a restaurant in Korea, floor heating is usually installed under the floor, and the weight of floor heating equipment makes the buildings that were originally overwhelmed even worse.
As the investigation deepens, the truth is revealed layer by layer. It turns out that the concrete floor slabs of Sanfeng Department Store are beamless floor slab structures. This structure itself has no problem. Many multi-story buildings used this beamless floor slab structure at that time. This structure requires concrete pillars to support the floor weight on each floor. In order to increase the strength of concrete pillars, steel bars must be added inside each pillar, and the position and length of the steel bars must be strictly implemented as required.
And the problem with Sanfeng Building is exactly here. After taking over the construction of the building, Li Liu's company changed the originally designed load-bearing column with a diameter of 80 cm to 60 cm, and changed the internal 16 and steel bars to 8. The theoretical position of the steel bars in each floor is 5 cm away. It is precisely because of this series of cutting corners that the strength of the floor slabs has been reduced by 20%. Later, when the tragedy happened, it was the pillars that cracked first, and then the floor slabs were overwhelmed, which eventually led to the collapse of the entire building. After the cause of the accident was announced, the Korean people were extremely angry and a demonstration that lasted for several months broke out, demanding severe punishment for the murderer. However, South Korea's chaebols have a strong influence, and the culprit Li Yu was sentenced to 10 years and 7 months in imprisonment .
Afterwards, the South Korean government conducted a safety inspection on buildings across the country. The result of the show was shocking. One of the seven high-rise buildings has safety hazards similar to the Sanfeng building, and 80% of them need to be rebuilt. Koreans only realized this after a bloody lesson, but such lessons were too painful.
The 5-story building instantly became a ruin, and the rising dust covered the sky.Faced with the sudden tragedy, people were frightened. People who witnessed the whole process cried and hugged each other, but they will face even more difficult rescue tasks next. A few minutes after the building collapsed, police cars, fire trucks and ambulances flocked to it. At that time, the scene was in chaos and many passers-by participated in the rescue with bare hands. However, the collapse of the building caused a large amount of cover, and it was extremely difficult to rescue with bare hands. Moreover, there are people under the ruins of the building, and large-scale rescue equipment such as heavy bulldozers cannot be used at all, so the entire rescue process is very slow.
is also facing the danger of building B collapse during the rescue. Building A and B were originally connected together, but now Building A is collapsed and Building B is standing next to it, and there is a risk of collapse at any time. If Building B collapses, rescuers will undoubtedly be buried, and the situation is very critical. So the next morning, the South Korean government announced a suspension of rescue. The decision of completely angered the relatives and friends of the buried crowd. They rushed to the streets to march and demanded that the government resume rescue operations immediately. Eventually, the parade evolved into a violent conflict between the masses and the police.
On the morning of the third day, after locking Building B with a steel cable, the government announced that the rescue operation would be launched again. Rescue teams kept searching for survivors and bodies from under the ruins. It was not until the 7th day that there were no more survivors that the government stopped the search and rescue operation. After this accident, the Korean people were extremely sad and angry. People took to the streets to conduct demonstrations, demanding that the government thoroughly investigate the cause of the collapse of the building and demanding severe punishment of the murderer.
- Causes of the collapse of Sanfeng Department Store
In the face of public anger, the South Korean government commissioned Dankook University Civil Structural Engineering Professor Zhong Lan to investigate the cause of the collapse of the building. After the building collapsed, there were many different opinions about the cause of the collapse. Some said it was caused by a gas explosion, and some said it was caused by a terrorist attack. Zhong Lan checked all the reasons one by one.
First of all, Zhong Lan ruled out the possibility of gas explosion. The collapse of buildings caused by gas explosions usually has obvious burn marks on site, and the scale of combustion will also be very large. However, according to Zhong Lan's investigation on the scene, there were no signs of fire, so the cause of gas explosion was excluded.
Then there was a terrorist attack, because before that, there were two terrorist attacks in South Korea and killed 136 people. Therefore, there is indeed a possibility of terrorist attacks, so terrorist attacks will inevitably place fierce explosives inside the building. Professor Zhong Lan did not find any traces related to the explosion during the investigation, so the terrorist attack factor was also ruled out.
Finally, Professor Zhong locked the investigation direction to the structure of the building itself, and focused on investigating whether the building itself has construction defects. From the beginning, Professor Zhong began to inspect the building materials. He stressed some concrete samples, and the test results showed that the concrete used for building construction met the requirements. Later, Professor Zhong discovered clues while inspecting the building design drawings.
It turns out that the Sanfeng Department Store was located in the beginning, but according to the design drawings, it should have been a 4-story office. However, when the builders were halfway through construction, Sanfeng Group asked them to convert the office building into a shopping mall and add an extra floor on it. The builder at that time refused this request, so Li Liu, the chairman of Sanfeng Group, terminated the construction contract and asked his construction company to continue construction. Finally, the 5-story Sanfeng Department Store was built according to Li Liu's wishes.
Since the mall needs to install escalator , the original office building design drawings did not have this design. In order to meet the installation needs of escalator, multiple load-bearing columns were cancelled, resulting in serious insufficient load-bearing capacity of the entire building. In addition, the 5th floor of the mall originally had an ice rink built, but it was later changed to 8 restaurants. When opening a restaurant in Korea, floor heating is usually installed under the floor, and the weight of floor heating equipment makes the buildings that were originally overwhelmed even worse.
As the investigation deepens, the truth is revealed layer by layer. It turns out that the concrete floor slabs of Sanfeng Department Store are beamless floor slab structures. This structure itself has no problem. Many multi-story buildings used this beamless floor slab structure at that time. This structure requires concrete pillars to support the floor weight on each floor. In order to increase the strength of concrete pillars, steel bars must be added inside each pillar, and the position and length of the steel bars must be strictly implemented as required.
And the problem with Sanfeng Building is exactly here. After taking over the construction of the building, Li Liu's company changed the originally designed load-bearing column with a diameter of 80 cm to 60 cm, and changed the internal 16 and steel bars to 8. The theoretical position of the steel bars in each floor is 5 cm away. It is precisely because of this series of cutting corners that the strength of the floor slabs has been reduced by 20%. Later, when the tragedy happened, it was the pillars that cracked first, and then the floor slabs were overwhelmed, which eventually led to the collapse of the entire building. After the cause of the accident was announced, the Korean people were extremely angry and a demonstration that lasted for several months broke out, demanding severe punishment for the murderer. However, South Korea's chaebols have a strong influence, and the culprit Li Yu was sentenced to 10 years and 7 months in imprisonment .
Afterwards, the South Korean government conducted a safety inspection on buildings across the country. The result of the show was shocking. One of the seven high-rise buildings has safety hazards similar to the Sanfeng building, and 80% of them need to be rebuilt. Koreans only realized this after a bloody lesson, but such lessons were too painful.
