About 120 Dead in South Korea Subway Inferno

[YogsVR4]

Absolutely horrendous!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp.../korea_fire_dc

TAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) - About 120 people were killed in South Korea (news - web sites) and scores were missing on Tuesday after flames and smoke engulfed two crowded subway trains following an arson attack, officials said.

The mayor of the southeastern city of Taegu said a 56-year-old male with a history of mental illness was suspected of starting the blaze at the end of the morning rush hour.

A witness said the man had set fire to flammable liquid in a milk carton and tossed it into a carriage.

Officials said a second train pulled into the station as the blaze took hold. The two trains, each with six carriages, had a total of up to 400 people on board.

Taegu Fire Chief Kim Shin-dong told reporters there were more than 70 unidentified charred bodies in the burned-out subway cars, which together with an official figure of 49 dead from hospitals took the toll to around 120.

Figures had switched throughout the day, with many bodies burned so badly they were impossible to identify immediately.

An official at the Taegu Emergency Rescue Center had earlier told Reuters 134 people had died. Scores of people were still unaccounted for and feared dead.

Many struggled in vain to escape the inferno that reduced the trains to metal skeletons and sent black, acrid smoke belching into the sky for hours after the fire started.

Television footage showed rescuers covering up charred bodies in the ash and soot-filled carriages, a burned shoe among the wreckage. At street level, relatives and friends gathered anxiously to look through a list of names or held each other and cried.

The number of injured on a board at the emergency center was put at 135, with 159 missing. It was unclear whether the missing included the 70 corpses the fire chief said were still in the trains.

Rescue official Lee Hyong-kyun said the fire ignited seat fabric and floor tiles.

"If you ignite a flammable liquid like gasoline inside a closed space, what you'll get is something very close to an explosion," he said.

"There would have been hardly any time to escape."

As dense smoke billowed from subway air vents, soot-covered firefighters in orange suits and with breathing apparatus dragged bodies and the injured up blackened stairwells.

"MOTHER, THERE'S SMOKE EVERYWHERE"

One man, whose wife was trapped by the inferno, told South Korean television he had received a desperate call from her mobile phone.

"Help me," he quoted her as saying. "There's a fire on the subway. The door is locked."

It was a heart-wrenching call others were to make.

"My daughter called me twice at 9.57 a.m. crying 'mother there's smoke everywhere, but the door won't open!" said a woman at a makeshift crisis center outside Taegu's Joongangro Station.

Rescue officials said they would tow the carriages to a hub station on Tuesday evening so forensic experts could examine victims' remains.

A fireman in Taegu, which is 120 miles southeast of Seoul, said the trains had been gutted.

"Everything is gone," said Sung Bo-hun, who was inside the subway until 7:40 pm (5:40 a.m. EST). "You can't recognize the people inside. It is all black and gray."

Telephone firms were helping people find out for sure if their relatives were on the trains by tracing mobile phone signals.

More than 100 people were killed and another 100 injured in a gas explosion on Taegu's only subway line in 1995.

PASSENGERS STRUGGLE WITH ATTACKER

Yonhap quoted one witness as saying passengers had tried in vain to tackle the suspect in Tuesday's blaze. Another said many passengers were trapped behind closed doors.

"When the fire broke out, the people close to the gap between the cars appear to have escaped, but those in the middle of the carriage were helpless," a fireman told Reuters.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites) sent his condolences to the families of victims. Prime Minister Kim Suk-soo was to hold an emergency meeting involving key government departments on the disaster at 8 a.m. EST.

Most of those injured were being treated for smoke inhalation.

The single subway line runs through the central part of Taegu, a well-established center for the textile and dyeing industry as well fashion. A second subway line is being built.

Kim Mi-ja, a 45-year-old housewife, stood outside the station, her eyes bloodshot from crying.

"I've been here all day waiting to hear anything about my older sister. I don't know how something like this could happen."

[jon@af]

Words would not adequetly describe my thoughts at this moment if I were to describe them, they would be: The families of those involved have my sympathy.