On June 29, 1995, the Sanfeng Department Store in Seoul, South Korea suddenly collapsed. In just 20 seconds, the entire building fell apart, killing 502 people and injuring 937 people. As one of the worst casualties in the history of global construction, although it has been nearly 30 years, it is still shocking. It is still very wary of cutting off the cause, learning from one example and eliminating future problems, and is still very wary in the current safety production process.
Time is rising, let us freeze our time and travel back to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, where the economy was developing rapidly in the late 1980s.
In 1987, Sanfeng Group obtained an open land originally used as a landfill in Seocao District, Seoul. It plans to build a four-story office building on this land, and the foundation has been laid. However, after on-site inspection, Li Yu, chairman of Sanfeng Group, found that the location is very good, and immediately regretted it. What kind of office building is going to be? Isn’t building a shopping mall a big profit every day? So the plan was temporarily changed and decided to convert it into a department store, and at the same time, it was required to build a floor, create a large indoor ice rink, and change the four floors to five floors.
foundation is considered based on the nature of the 4-layer structure, and it is changed to 5-layer and the use nature is changed to a shopping mall. Then the original structural design must be overturned and started over again. The original construction contractor was quite visionary and informed Li Liu of possible risks and serious consequences. The domineering chairman could not listen to it and insisted on his own. Seeing that the contractor was unconscious, he directly dismissed the project team and found a construction company he owned to complete the subsequent construction. At the same time, Li Yu changed his mind again and converted the 5th floor ice rink into a catering floor. After completion, he considered introducing 8 restaurants to settle in. Anyway, how to maximize the benefits.
The result of this change has led to the load-bearing columns that were previously planned to bear 4 floors, and now they need to bear the weight of 5 floors. The originally planned empty ice rink has also become an intensive restaurant, and the weight it carries is also increasing. During the construction process, in order to facilitate more space inside the mall to install escalators, many load-bearing columns planned previously were cancelled. According to the analysis of post-accident investigation, the contractor reduced the load-bearing column from 80 cm thick to 60 cm thick during the construction process, which greatly weakened the load-bearing capacity of the load-bearing column; in addition, the floor steel bars were extremely chaotic, and the placement of some of the steel bars in the floor slabs seriously deviated from the protective layer, resulting in a significant reduction in the effective cross-section of the concrete bend of the floor slab, further reducing the load-bearing capacity of the floor slab.
After multiple changes, Sanfeng Department Store was completed in the second half of 1989 and officially opened on July 7, 1990. Thanks to the rise of South Korea's economy and its location in a prime location, the number of customers continues to be booming after the opening, and Sanfeng Company has made a lot of money.
Only five years after opening, on the evening of June 28, 1995, the security guard on duty in the mall heard a strange sound inside the building, as if something was cracking. After checking, there was a crack on the roof of the 5th floor and reported to the facility manager. On the morning of June 29, the facility manager checked and the cracks had expanded, but he still didn't take them seriously, because the cracks had been created by the mobile air conditioner on the roof. Almost no one cared about it at that time, and thought it would be a simple repair.
opens business at 10:00 on the same day, and the crowds are surging. However, the cracks on the roof of the 5th floor continued to expand. Employees of a restaurant found cracks above the load-bearing column of the restaurant and reported to the facility manager. The facility manager still didn't care and just hung up a sign to stop the restaurant's business and then talked about it after the repair. The restaurant owner never expected that he had no choice but to accept the reality of allowing employees to take a vacation and go home, so that many employees could escape.
at 12:00 noon, the crack gradually expanded to the 4th floor, and employees have discovered and reported to the facility manager. At this time, the fool knew the seriousness of the matter and reported it to the senior management immediately. However, the results of the company's senior management meeting were that all shops on the 5th floor were closed and the heavy objects on the top floor and the heavy objects in the shops were transferred to the basement.
At this time, the floor slabs on the 4th and 5th floors began to sink, the cracks became bigger and bigger, and some display items were shaken and fell down.The senior executives of Sanfeng Company held another meeting and reported to Chairman Li Liu, and invited a civil structure expert to inspect and judge at around 3:30 pm. The expert only conducted a simple inspection and quickly gave suggestions: there were serious problems in the building structure, and it was possible to collapse at any time. The details must be closed for further inspection. It is recommended that Sanfeng Department Store be closed first and evacuated the crowd.
. Chairman Li Li looked at the continuous flow of customers in the mall, and felt pain in his heart, weighing the losses of closure, and made a decision to continue business, which was already 5 pm. As the floor slab on the fourth floor was severely sunk, the shopping mall immediately closed the fourth floor. If the crowd is evacuated at this time, it should be too late, but the company still decides to operate normally.
At 6:03, the building began to shake violently, and the top floor structure was broken and the sound of breaking was endless. At this time, the mall staff thought of starting to evacuate the crowd, but it was too late, and the historical freeze for people to escape was only 2 minutes. At 6:05, the entire building began to collapse from the fifth floor to the bottom. In just 20 seconds, this former landmark building in South Korea became a ruin, and even the four-story underground space was filled with the fallen floor. At this time, there were still thousands of customers and shops and shopping mall staff in the building, unable to escape, and all were crushed under the ruins.
This casualties of more than 1,400 people shocked the South Korean government and the public. Due to the underdevelopment of information networks back then, many people may have never heard of it. The result of the post-investigation investigation was that it involved violations of the approval process, illegal reconstruction, cutting corners, and other circumstances involving official and business engagement, corruption and bribery. Several senior executives of Sanfeng Company, including Chairman Li Liu and the corrupt officials involved, were sentenced to prison. The huge aftermath compensation totaled US$330 million, with an average of US$220,000 per victim. Since then, the glorious Sanfeng Company has permanently disappeared from people's sight.
In the face of high interests and money, human nature is destroyed; the pursuit of material and desire makes people do whatever they want. 502 lives are too expensive. In the face of life, let us have more respect and awe, so that history will no longer be repeated.
