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Six dead, 25 injured in blaze at Banyan Tree hotel construction site in Busan

Published: 14 Feb. 2025, 13:45 Updated: 14 Feb. 2025, 16:01

LIM JEONG-WON
[email protected]

Smoke billows from a construction site in Busan on Feb. 14. [NEWS1]

A fire broke out Friday at the construction site of a luxury resort scheduled to open this year in Busan, resulting in six deaths and 25 people injured.

At around 10:51 a.m. on Friday, a fire broke out at the construction site of the Banyan Tree Haeundae Busan near a tourist complex in Gijang District in Busan, killing six workers and causing injuries, such as smoke inhalation, according to the Busan Fire and Disaster headquarters and others.

The blaze is believed to have started from insulation materials catching fire near the swimming pool on the first floor of one of the construction site's three buildings.

“When we arrived at the scene, black smoke was filling the inside of the building," said Park Heung-mo, head of the rescue and emergency department at Gijang Fire Station in Busan, in a briefing at the scene Friday afternoon. "The deceased were found in the same place where the fire broke out, and it must have been difficult to evacuate because there were many flammable materials in the entrance.”

The fire department issued a level 1 response at 11:10 a.m. and began extinguishing the fire by deploying helicopters, and raised the response level to 2 around noon. A level 1 response is an alert that mobilizes all personnel from relevant fire departments in the local area, while level 2 involves mobilizing 50 to 80 more pieces of equipment from eight to 14 fire departments.

Fire authorities said the initial fire was successfully extinguished at 1:34 p.m., about two hours after the level 1 response was issued.

At the time of the fire breaking out, hundreds of people were working on construction around the site, and the six people who died were reportedly working inside the building.

About 100 people were evacuated immediately after the fire began, and 14 people who had fled to the roof of the site were rescued by helicopter.

A helicopter rescues evacuees from the rooftop of a building at a construction site in Busan on Feb. 14. [NEWS1]

A total of 127 fire trucks and 352 firefighters were deployed to the scene to carry out firefighting and search operations.

“Sparks were falling from the ceiling, and the workers were not able to put them out well with fire extinguishers. There was also a lot of black smoke," said a worker who had evacuated the scene.

“The alarm went off, so I came down thinking it was a fire inspection at first," said another worker. "When I got to the first floor, there was a lot of smoke, and the sound of glass breaking was like 'thud thud,' and it seemed like the fire was spreading quickly inward."

The Banyan Tree Haeundae Busan began construction on its 41,280 square meter site in Gijang District in Busan in April 2022.

The construction company is Samjung Enterprise and Samjung E&C, and the three buildings with three underground floors and 12 floors above ground were scheduled to open in the first half of this year as a five-star resort.

The operator of the resort, Banyan Tree Holdings, is a global company that operates 48 hotels and resorts and 64 hot springs in 22 countries, including in Phuket, Thailand.

The Busan Metropolitan Police Agency began investigating the cause of the fire, with the criminal investigation unit and scientific investigation unit involved in the operation, according to police.

Acting President Choi Sang-mok ordered fire departments and related ministries to “mobilize all available personnel and equipment to do the best to put out the fire,” adding that “every effort to conduct search and rescue to prevent casualties and also to ensure the safety of the firefighters.”

Update, Feb. 14: Story updated to include further information on fire.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]