Incident Report

Subject:                  Explosion at chemical/textile factory kills 5, injures 2    

Date of Email report:  Mon 05/09/2011  

Report Detail:

This is a reminder that not all incidents occur in operations  Great care needs to be exercised within the laboratory environment to ensure the safety of yourself and those that work around you….  Do you exercise good flammable liquid controls in your lab?  Do you limit the volume allowable in transportation and in use within the laboratory at any one time?

GUMI, South Korea, Aug. 27 (Yonhap) --

An explosion sparked a fire at a textile factory in south-eastern South Korea on Saturday, killing five people and injuring two others, police said. The apparent accident broke out at around 1:35 p.m. at the laboratory in a three-story factory building of textile company TK Chemical in the industrial city of Gumi, about 200 kilometres southeast of Seoul. The blaze, which sent black smoke billowing into the sky, gutted the second and third floors of the building.

Seven people were in the building at the time, of whom five were confirmed killed, including deputy laboratory chief Hong Myung-hyuk, 49, police said.

Two others injured were taken to hospital with serious burns, they said. Twenty-six fire trucks and about 110 fire-fighters brought the blaze under control in about two hours, police said. Police suspected that experiments involving inflammable chemical substances might have ignited the explosion.

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