Seoul
CNN
—
Around 500 other people have been evacuated from their houses on Friday after a fireplace broke out in Guryong Village, one of the vital closing closing slums in South Korea’s capital Seoul, in keeping with fireplace officers.
The fireplace broke out round 6:28 a.m. within the fourth district of the village, mentioned Shin Yong-ho, an legitimate with the Gangnam Fire Station, in a televised briefing. First responders arrived round 5 mins later, he mentioned.
No deaths or accidents had been reported thus far.
Around 60 houses are believed to have burned down, Shin mentioned, including maximum constructions are created from vinyl plywood panels.
Videos on social media display the hearth engulfing what seems like rows of houses, with large plumes of thick black smoke striking above the slum as sirens wail within reach.
More than 800 reaction team of workers had been mobilized, together with firefighters, police and governmental staff, whilst 10 helicopters had been deployed to help with the reaction, 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 government to mobilize “all available personnel and equipment,” in keeping with the presidential place of job.
Yoon additionally asked native governments to evacuate citizens and make sure the security of rescue staff, his place of job mentioned.
Authorities have lengthy warned that Guryong citizens are at specific possibility of failures, with the Gangnam executive pronouncing on its web page that the slum used to be “vulnerable to fires” in 2019.
It used to be additionally hit arduous by way of flooding closing August, when file rainfall killed a minimum of 13 other people in Seoul – together with some citizens trapped within the dingy “banjiha” basement houses depicted within the film “Parasite.”
The Guryong slum has lengthy been observed as a logo of the distance between wealthy and deficient in South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest financial system. It’s a part of the rich, glittering Gangnam district, made well-known by way of Psy’s 2012 tune “Gangnam Style” and also known as the Beverly Hills of Seoul.
Gangnam’s high-rise condo constructions lie lower than a kilometer from the shacks of Guryong, the place many citizens reside in cramped makeshift housing constructed from fabrics like picket and corrugated iron.
Though plans to redevelop the realm stretch again a minimum of a decade, a large number of proposals have faltered because of disagreements between native governing our bodies and negotiations over land reimbursement.
These efforts are ongoing, with 406 families – greater than a 3rd of the slum’s inhabitants – relocated as of 2019, in keeping with the Gangnam executive web page. More than 1,000 citizens are nonetheless dwelling there, Gangnam officers showed on Friday.
The district shared extra redevelopment plans closing May, with a neighborhood legitimate pronouncing the land could be became “an eco-friendly luxury residential complex.”
Authorities are operating to assist relocate about 1,500 families dwelling in shacks throughout 3 primary slums, together with Guryong, into public housing as an alternative, the Seoul executive mentioned in a information free up closing November.
It added that town targets to ultimately “eliminate abnormal residences such as shacks and vinyl houses.”
