995 On June 29, 1995, Sanfeng Department Store, a top shopping paradise, suddenly collapsed in the downtown area of Seoul, South Korea. In just less than 20 seconds, this symbol of South Korea's rapid economic development instantly turned into ruins. After the
accident, 1,500 customers trapped under the rubble of the mall, 937 of whom were seriously injured and 502 died. This was also the most serious accident in peacetime in South Korea.
The key is that when the accident was investigated, the truth was shocking - it seemed like an occasional shopping mall building collapse incident, which directly points to the corruption and shoddy projects in Korean society.
Many people say that Sanfeng Department Store tragedy, using 502 living lives, the commercial construction properties in South Korea began to undergo a major change in 1995.
The ins and outs of this incident were focused on a documentary program in the United States, " Return to Crisis Scene ". The film combines interpretation and real historical images to tell us this tragic tragedy, revealing the truth behind the scenes of the biggest tofu project in South Korea -
html At 7 a.m. on June 29, a 19-year-old girl Park Seung-hyun was taking the subway and was rushing to work at Sanfeng Department Store. In order to realize her dream of being a teacher and bear the tuition, she needs to work as a part-time sales assistant in a children's clothing store in the mall.
Sanfeng Department Store is the most famous luxury high-end shopping center in South Korea in the early 1990s. There are more than 1,000 employees working here, and they need to receive more than 40,000 customers every day, with weekly sales of up to four million US dollars.
You should know that this was an astronomical figure in the Korean society at that time.
Just when Park Seung-hyun lost to work on the first floor, a problem occurred in a restaurant on the fifth floor. The restaurant owner suddenly found a crack around one of the pillars and the floor was sunken, so he called the mall's equipment manager, .
Mr. Li temporarily closed the restaurant and hung up construction warnings. On the other hand, for the reputation of the mall, all insiders should not talk to the outside world.
But the crisis will not disappear out of thin air just because of tightening. At 12:30 noon, guests on the fourth floor began to hear strange sounds and felt the slight vibration of the building. After they informed Manager Li, the latter thought there was a problem with the air conditioner on the rooftop, so they just turned it off and did not take any warning measures.
At 5:40 pm, a "bang" sound began to sound on the top floor, and the ceiling continued to shake;
:47 pm, a louder sound came from the top floor, and the crisis was about to break out;
When we waited until 5:52, without anyone warning in advance, the entire five-story shopping mall collapsed.
Not long after, the municipal government began to organize rescue. More than a thousand rescuers and volunteers continued to dig out the ruins, lifted the injured and transported the bodies away. Countless citizens who learned about the collapse gathered around the ruins. There were spectators who were simply watching the tragedy. Of course, more were the families of the victims. They cried and snatched the earth because of the blood of the relatives lying under the ruins. They knew nothing about their life and death.
After dark, more than 30 cranes and excavators accelerated the rescue operation, and thousands of tons of reinforced concrete were above their heads, but the rescuers did not care about their lives at all.
However, the number of deaths has increased step by step as time goes by.
On the second day, the death toll reached 44; on the fourth day, it reached 107. A week later, the government authorities believed that there was no hope of saving, because humans could only survive for 3 days in a 30-degree confined environment without water.In the end, the tragedy of 502 deaths and this department store that has been standing for less than 6 years is a heavy blow to the victims' families and ordinary citizens. Why does this top shopping paradise make people fall into hell in an instant?
Tanguo University Professor of Civil and Structural Engineering, Zhong Lan, became the person in charge of the accident investigation. Under his layers of peeling the cocoon, he checked the cause of the accident one by one.
First of all, it is caused by gas explosion.
Generally, there will be obvious fires on the site due to building collapses caused by gas explosions, and it is a large-scale fire. However, from the on-site exploration situation, Professor Zhong did not have this direct evidence, so he was excluded.
followed by a sensational terrorist bomb attack.
This basically targets the radicals in hostile countries. Since there have been two such terrorist attacks in South Korea before, resulting in the innocent death of 136 people, they are indeed suspicious.
Just 10 weeks ago, the Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma, the United States suffered a terrorist explosion, allowing Professor Zhong to understand similarities with American personnel.
However, under the analysis of Glenn Bell, a structural engineer who investigated the incident at the time, this kind of explosion had its own unique "traces", which was called the "wreckyard" by investigators, that is, the fragments of the explosion exploded from the surface of the building to the sides.
However, in the tragedy of Sanfeng Department Store, a very obvious gap is that the wreckage did not explode outwards, but the entire building collapsed directly downwards, so the so-called terrifying explosion can basically be ruled out. After eliminating these external reasons, Professor Zhong projected his vision on the building itself, that is, there may be structural defects in the building.
Although Professor Zhong checked the building materials of the building and put a section of concrete sample into the strong hydraulic clamp for extrusion, no abnormalities were found, but during the on-site exploration and investigation, he saw clues from the structure of the concrete floor. And this is the root cause of the entire building's dumping.
It turns out that Sanfeng Department Store has a beamless floor slab structure. This is a common method when building multi-story buildings. Concrete pillars support the weight of each floor. Therefore, in order to enhance strength, steel bars need to be added inside each pillar, and the position of steel bars in concrete is strictly required.
In the floor slab of Sanfeng Department Store, the steel bars are installed five centimeters from the top of the floor slab, but in theory it should be 10 centimeters! The reduction in the position of the steel bar is equivalent to the thinning of the floor slab, which directly leads to a 20% reduction in the strength of the floor slab in the most critical parts of the building. And these are exactly the connection points between the floor and the column, from which the pressure is transmitted to the ground.
However, this negligence in construction projects is not the fuse, and what makes people even more surprised and angry is the greed and ignorance of the shopping mall management.
At the beginning, when the original design of the mall, there were actually only four floors on the ground. But halfway through the construction, the management decided to set up more space and asked to build the fifth floor, which made the builder with a conscience in the industry directly refuse, because the latter knew that once too much was added, the building would sooner or later collapse. However, the management replaced the builder and hired a construction company that was not knowledgeable within the group to complete the construction.
Not only that, it was originally the fifth floor of the ice rink, but was changed to open 8 restaurants by the management. After all, these corpse-based people know that catering makes a lot more money than these sports and entertainment stores.
But this increases the risk of market collapse. Because in Korean restaurants, customers sit on the ground, the restaurant must be equipped with floor heating.In this way, the floor, which was originally weak in load-bearing strength, was thickened again, and the important connection points on the fifth floor would bear more pressure.
After these hidden crises were laid, Professor Zhong was always thinking about what the last straw that broke the camel's back. Just after he asked his investigators to read all the changes in the buildings and equipment of Sanfeng Department Store since its establishment, he finally found the fuse - the air conditioner on the rooftop.
It turned out that two years before the mall collapsed, the three large air conditioners on the rooftop had moved due to noise disturbing the public, but according to the normal process, they had to be lifted with a crane. In order to save money, the management put wheels under the air conditioners and dragged them to the other side of the roof.
Each air conditioner weighing 15 tons was the initiator that caused the inside of the pillars of the fifth-floor restaurant to break down at the beginning of the incident. Then within two years, once the air conditioner is operating, the huge vibration of itself will intensify the continuous transmission of cracks in the pillars, which will eventually lead to an irreversible tragedy.
So, looking at the evidence of the investigation of the entire Sanfeng Department Store tragedy, we all realize the ugly face of the management who is blindly making money. Whether it is maliciously stamping the fifth floor, changing the ice rink into a restaurant, or dragging the heavy air conditioner randomly to save money, they are all urging the 502 living lives to leave step by step.
Even on the day of the disaster, the management could have avoided this tragedy. When Manager Li noticed the huge damage to the restaurant pillars, the sinking of the ground, and the subsequent loud noise, he had time to conduct a thorough investigation and evacuate the 1,500 customers to leave early.
can be until the last moment of the accident that these management personnel only know how to maintain the market image and sales performance, regardless of the safety of the people.
Just after Professor Zhong's investigation was made public, countless Korean people began a demonstration that lasted several months. The government sentenced Li Yu, president of Sanfeng Department Store, to 10 years in prison, and his son, who served as the CEO, to only 7 years in prison. Among the 21 other people sentenced, there were 12 "big tigers", all of whom were senior government officials. After the
accident, the South Korean government started a new wave of strict building inspections nationwide and found that one of every seven high-rise buildings needs to be rebuilt, and four-fifths of the buildings need to be renovated, and only 2% of them are considered safe.
As a result, the fig leaf of the rapid development of South Korea's economy was ruthlessly lifted. In less than two years, the financial crisis that swept across Asia spread to South Korea. South Korea, which has developed rapidly for more than 30 years from the 1970s to the 1990s, has a hidden relationship with the bubbles, illusions, greed and ugliness behind it. In such a seemingly unrelated building collapse accident, it has a secret connection that makes people feel cold.
Little do you know that it is the so-called Korean political and business circles that blindly pursue the rise of high-rise buildings that have caused the invisible root of the tragedy of Sanfeng Department Store.
text/Pipi Movie Editorial Department: Tang Si
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