Seoul
Act Daily News
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Around 500 individuals have been evacuated from their properties on Friday after a fireplace broke out in Guryong Village, one of many final remaining slums in South Korea’s capital Seoul, in line with fireplace officers.
The fireplace broke out round 6:28 a.m. within the fourth district of the village, mentioned Shin Yong-ho, an official with the Gangnam Fire Station, in a televised briefing. First responders arrived round 5 minutes later, he mentioned.
No deaths or accidents have been reported thus far.
Around 60 properties are believed to have burned down, Shin mentioned, including most buildings are made out of vinyl plywood panels.
Videos on social media present the hearth engulfing what seems to be like rows of properties, with enormous plumes of thick black smoke hanging above the slum as sirens wail close by.
More than 800 response personnel have been mobilized, together with firefighters, police and governmental employees, whereas 10 helicopters have been deployed to help with the response, Shin mentioned.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who’s in Switzerland attending the World Economic Forum, has been notified of the hearth and has ordered authorities to mobilize “all available personnel and equipment,” in line with the presidential workplace.
Yoon additionally requested native governments to evacuate residents and make sure the security of rescue employees, his workplace mentioned.
Authorities have lengthy warned that Guryong residents are at explicit threat of disasters, with the Gangnam authorities saying on its web site that the slum was “vulnerable to fires” in 2019.
It was additionally hit onerous by flooding final August, when report rainfall killed at the least 13 individuals in Seoul – together with some residents trapped within the dingy “banjiha” basement properties depicted within the film “Parasite.”
The Guryong slum has lengthy been seen as an emblem of the hole between wealthy and poor in South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest financial system. It’s a part of the rich, glittering Gangnam district, made well-known by Psy’s 2012 track “Gangnam Style” and typically referred to as the Beverly Hills of Seoul.
Gangnam’s high-rise residence buildings lie lower than a kilometer from the shacks of Guryong, the place many residents dwell in cramped makeshift housing constructed from supplies like wooden and corrugated iron.
Though plans to redevelop the world stretch again at the least a decade, quite a few proposals have faltered on account of disagreements between native governing our bodies and negotiations over land compensation.
These efforts are ongoing, with 406 households – greater than a 3rd of the slum’s inhabitants – relocated as of 2019, in line with the Gangnam authorities web site. More than 1,000 residents are nonetheless residing there, Gangnam officers confirmed on Friday.
The district shared extra redevelopment plans final May, with an area official saying the land could be become “an eco-friendly luxury residential complex.”
Authorities are working to assist relocate about 1,500 households residing in shacks throughout three main slums, together with Guryong, into public housing as an alternative, the Seoul authorities mentioned in a news launch final November.
It added that the town goals to ultimately “eliminate abnormal residences such as shacks and vinyl houses.”