Fire roars through 70 stores in one of Korea's largest markets

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Fire roars through 70 stores in one of Korea's largest markets

A blaze rips through the Daegu Agriculture and Fisheries Wholesale Market on Tuesday night, torching nearly 70 stores. [YONHAP]

A blaze rips through the Daegu Agriculture and Fisheries Wholesale Market on Tuesday night, torching nearly 70 stores. [YONHAP]

A fire broke out in Daegu at one of the country’s largest markets Tuesday night, torching nearly 70 stores.
 
No casualties were reported.
 
According to police, the fire seems to have started in a storage area in a building in the Daegu Agriculture and Fisheries Wholesale Market on Tuesday at around 8:30 p.m. 
 
The building was three stories and housed 152 stores mostly selling fruit, said police. About 70 stores across 8,000 square meters (1.98 acres) were affected.
 
Witnesses on the scene told police that they heard a loud explosion and soon after thick smoke filled the air.
 
The fire department received a call and nearly 250 firefighters and 90 fire engines were dispatched to the scene.
 
The main blaze was extinguished at around 9:43 p.m. and the fire was completely out by 11:59 p.m.
 
Police and firefighters hold a joint investigation on Wednesday morning after the blaze was extinguished. [YONHAP]

Police and firefighters hold a joint investigation on Wednesday morning after the blaze was extinguished. [YONHAP]

Daegu police and firefighters said they would open a joint investigation to probe the cause of the blaze and determine whether the building’s safety systems worked properly.
 
As to why the blaze spread so quickly, firefighters told local reporters that the building’s walls appeared to have been made out of flammable materials.
 
The Daegu Agriculture and Fisheries Wholesale Market is the largest agriculture and fisheries wholesale market outside the Seoul metropolitan area and the third-largest in the entire country after Garak Market in Songpa District, southern Seoul and Gangseo Market in Gangseo District, western Seoul.
 
The Daegu market’s total trade volume last year was 928 billion won ($651 million).
 
Total damages caused by the blaze have yet to be calculated. A fire that torched 32 out of 80 stores in the same building on Aug. 29, 2013, resulted in about 1 billion won worth of losses.
 
Min Seung-wook, 37, who sold fruit at one of the stores that was burned, told a JoongAng Ilbo reporter on Wednesday that it felt like a dream.
 
“Just yesterday, the building was filled with boxes of fruit,” said Min. “Now, it’s all gone. Like someone just wiped it away with an eraser.”
 
A female merchant in her 30s who asked not to be named  lost boxes of fruits in the fire and her pet dog.
 
“That was my store,” she said, pointing to a burned area on the building’s first floor that was covered in ashes. “I had just sold all my fruit in an auction, packaged them and was ready to send them away.”
 
She continued, “My dog was also there.”

BY KIM JUNG-SEOK, LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]
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