Sampoong Revisited
In June of 1995 the Sampoong department store in Seoul, Korea, collapsed. 501 people died and over 900 were injured. I remember the incident quite clearly. Sampoong was an ugly, pink building in an affluent part of Seoul. I was teaching at an institute a few blocks away and one of my students lived in the Sampoong apartments behind the department store. He often stood outside to watch the rescue efforts, then would tell me about it in class. People were being rescued for several days. I remember one guy was pulled out after a week or so. When someone asked him what he wanted to drink, he said, “Coke”. The news picked that up and the Coca-Cola company used it in a commercial. I also heard that he was to receive a lifetime of free Coke, but I don’t remember if that was just a rumor or not.
Some time after the collapse I heard stories about why it had fallen. At the time, people were saying that an expansion of the underground parking garage was the culprit (one of the reasons cited in this article from a 2004 issue of the Korea Times). Back then I wasn’t following the news at all, local or otherwise. I never read any newspapers and I was always out of the house. It wasn’t long before I stopped hearing things and forgot about it. Today, I got a reminder.
I flipped on the discovery channel this afternoon and an episode of some disaster series was on. This episode was about the Sampoong Department Store. It was fascinating to watch. They went step-by-step through what happened and why. There was a long history of poor construction decisions by the CEO, and they all culminated in the collapse. They didn’t mention the parking garage, though. The CEO, in order to work around regulations, cut costs, and increase retail space, made drastic changes to the original design that weakened the overall structure of the building.
The fourth floor was originally supposed to be a roller skating rink. Korea has regulations on how much space in a department store can be used for retail, so the roller rink was a way around the regulations. When the fourth floor was actually built, they set it up instead for restaurants. This required heating pipes to be put under the floor, since Korean restaurants are often designed for their customers to sit on the floor. This meant the thickness of the floor had to be increased by a foot, adding more weight to the fourth floor overall. The construction company didn’t want to go through with it unless they could put more support columns in. But the Sampoong CEO refused to allow them to. When the construction company wouldn’t cave in, the CEO fired them. He then had Sampoong Construction carry out the plans.
Not only did Sampoong Construction build the building without more support columns, they did so with columns that were smaller than they should have been. One accident investigator said that the department store was doomed from the time construction was complete. He was surprised it stood for 5 years.
The next poor decision involved water tanks. The water tanks were originally built on the ground. When people living in the area (most likely in Sampoong Apartments) complained about the noise, the CEO had the water tanks moved onto the roof. When full, the water tanks added 30 tons of weight to the roof. With the heavier roof and fourth floor, the small supports were under enormous stress. Yet still they held.
Ultimately, it was the installation of a safety feature that triggered the collapse. Korean regulations require all escalators to be surrounded by fire shields. During a fire, these drop down from the ceiling and enclose the escalators in order to prevent the spread of fire and smoke to other floors. While installing the fire shields, one of the columns near the escalators on the fourth floor had to be cut. The workers removed 25% of the column. From then on, the column began to slowly punch through the ceiling into the fifth floor.
From early morning on June 29, 1995, a number of signs of imminent danger were ignored. Restaurant workers on the fifth floor noticed a bulge in the floor. A couple of hours later, when the floor was showing cracks, the restaurants all closed. Throughout the day the building made loud noises, popping and cracking sounds. The bulge on the fifth floor got bigger. Vibrations were felt throughout the building. The CEO ordered the fifth floor gas pipes turned off and the water tanks on the roof emptied. Then he called in a structural engineer in the late afternoon to investigate. He didn’t want to close the store for fear of losing profits. The engineer took several pictures, then reported back to the CEO around 4 pm. His report was positive. There was no immediate danger and the damage could be repaired. A couple of hours later, during the peak shopping period, a very loud series of noises were heard. At this point, workers sounded an alarm and began to evacuate the building. But it was too late. A few minutes after the evacuation began, the building started to collapse. In 30 seconds, all 5 floors were a pile of rubble.
It was later learned that the structural engineer had intentionally downplayed the problem in his report. He didn’t want to worry the CEO. The CEO ultimately was sentenced to a 10 year prison term for criminal negligence. Others involved went to jail as well. There were other disasters in Korea in the 90s, but this one was the worst.