Investigators found that the gym where several victims died in the large fire at an auto-parts factory in Daedeok-gu, Daejeon, was actually an improvised mezzanine that did not appear on the building plans.
On the 21st, Daejeon’s Daedeok District office and the Daedeok Fire Department said the space where nine bodies were found had been reported as being on the third floor but was actually a mezzanine carved out of the second floor and not shown on the plans. Because the building needed to accommodate machinery, the floor-to-ceiling height is 5.5 m (about 18 ft).
That left a tall void between the ground-level ramp up to the third-floor parking and the third floor itself. Daedeok District officials say the void was closed off and repurposed as an improvised two-level space. Exercise equipment was placed on the mezzanine above the second-floor lounge, which led people to initially report it as a third-floor gym.
Park Gyeong-ha, head of Daedeok District’s Housing and Landscape Division, said the space does not appear on the plans and that they suspect a separate stair was built at the window to access it. On whether the space was an illegal extension, he said he could not be certain because he had not entered it himself.
The area first reported as a gym was actually a changing room, and staff routinely rested there during breaks, sometimes sleeping. Analysts say that layout may have contributed to the high number of fatalities.
Because the original second floor was split into two levels, windows were located on only one side. The front side had no windows.
Many employees resting on the mezzanine at lunchtime discovered the fire and tried to escape, but the rapid spread likely made it difficult to find exits. With windows on only one side, smoke may not have vented effectively.
Nam Deuk-woo, chief of the Daedeok Fire Station, said, “We can speculate that the front exit was blocked, which would have made escape difficult, but it’s hard to conclude definitively that this was the primary cause of the high death toll.” He added that if windows could have been opened, smoke would have cleared more easily, so there may have been obstructions that prevented that.
Most Commented