A fire that broke out this morning in a neighborhood of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, destroyed at least 60 precarious homes and forced about 500 residents to flee, authorities announced.
So far, no injuries or deaths have been reported from the fire in Guryong village, in the South Korean capital, officials said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.
Shin Yong-ho of the neighboring Gangnam area fire department said rescue teams continued to search the fire-affected areas, which were reportedly safely evacuated.
More than 800 firefighters, police officers and government employees were mobilized to fight the blaze.it will have started at 06:30 local time (Thursday 21:30 in Lisbon).
Photos from the scene show firefighters battling the flames under a thick cloud of white smoke as helicopters drop water on the site.
Shin Yong-ho said the cause of the fire is still being investigated and the fire is said to have started in one of the houses in the area, built with plastic and plywood.
The country’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, who participates in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called on authorities to mobilize all available resources to minimize the damage, said executive branch spokesman Kim Eun-hye.
South Korea is still recovering from its worst disaster in nearly a decade after a stampede in the capital’s center killed nearly 160 people during Halloween night celebrations last October.
Experts claim the tragedy is due to poor planning by the authorities, who failed to take basic crowd control measures despite expecting large gatherings of people during the party.
Close to some of the most expensive parts of Seoul, Guryong village has been ravaged by fires over the years, in part due to precarious housing.
The village was established in the 1980s to receive people who had been evicted from their homes during public projects to rebuild neighbourhoods.
Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes in slums or poor neighborhoods, in a process that the then military leaders saw as crucial to beautifying the city for foreign visitors ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Source: DN
