Ulsan: Three workers have died and two others were presumed dead after being discovered under a collapsed boiler tower at a thermal power plant in the southeastern city of Ulsan on Friday, with two others remaining unaccounted for, firefighting officials said.
The boiler tower collapsed at a power plant of the Ulsan branch of Korea East-West Power Co, a state-run utility company, the previous day.
Two workers were pronounced dead after being pulled out of the rubble, raising the death toll to three, firefighting officials said. One person had been pronounced dead while trapped earlier in the day, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Operations to pull out another two were underway, though both were feared dead.
The exact locations of the remaining two were still unknown.
Initially, nine workers had been reported trapped, but two were rescued early on.
One of the deceased was identified as a 44-year-old man. He was pronounced dead around 5 am after going into cardiac arrest while rescue workers tried to pull him out, Kim Jeong-sik, an official at the Ulsan Nambu fire station, told reporters.
“A rescue worker injected him with painkillers and took measures to keep him warm, but he eventually passed away,” Kim said.
Firefighters had to work through some 30 metres of steel and other debris to reach the site of the collapse.
The tower, built in 1981, was 60 metres tall and reportedly in the process of being demolished after its use was stopped in 2021.
The accident happened as workers from a subcontractor commissioned to dismantle the structure were cutting steel supports to ease its collapse during blasting work.
As the work took place some 25 metres above ground, industry experts raised the possibility that a heavier load was placed on one side of the structure and caused it to collapse.
Whether safety measures were in place, such as by supporting the tower with wires, will be a key question during the investigation process.
The labour ministry has said it plans to conduct searches and seizures to investigate the cause.
(IANS)
