A fire that broke out at the Coupang No. 32 logistics center in Seongnam-dong, Seo-gu, Incheon, is being extinguished by firefighting authorities on the morning of the 19th. The blaze, which started around 6:54 a.m. the previous day, had not been put out as of that morning, exceeding 24 hours. News1
Firefighting operations at Coupang’s No. 32 logistics center in Incheon have continued into a 38th hour following a fire at the site. Fire authorities had initially set 11 p.m. as their target for bringing the blaze under initial control, but that goal has become effectively unattainable as the flames intensified again.
According to fire authorities on the 19th, the flames reignited late in the day on the sixth floor of Coupang’s No. 32 logistics warehouse in Seohae-gu, Incheon, where the fire had broken out. Fire authorities deployed two excavators to the truck access route (ramp area) connected to the sixth floor to break down walls, repeatedly withdrawing temporarily and then resuming the work.
The excavators, deployed around 4 p.m., carried out demolition work for about an hour. The plan was to vent the smoke and heat filling the interior to the outside and secure space for water spraying before sending personnel inside. Having secured the space, fire authorities carried out water-spraying operations using pump trucks. From outside, work to spray water into the interior using aerial ladder trucks and articulating boom trucks was also conducted in parallel. From the air, firefighting helicopters were mobilized to begin water-spraying operations.
Even after the demolition was carried out, the flames inside the building were not easily brought under control. As the accumulated heat did not cool down, the flames repeatedly spread to the combustible materials filling the interior. As of now, fire authorities have still been unable to send personnel inside.
“The flames (on the sixth floor) intensified, so we continued firefighting operations centered on that location,” a firefighting official said in a phone call with The Seoul Economic Daily. “The situation keeps changing depending on the nature of the fire.”
Meanwhile, Seohae-gu issued an evacuation order to nearby residents on the same day, judging that there was a possibility of the logistics center collapsing.