In the early hours of September 6, 2022, heavy rain brought by Typhoon Hinnamnor struck Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province. After the apartment management office broadcast an announcement telling residents to move their vehicles parked in the underground garage, water rushed in while residents descended to move their cars. Of the nine people trapped underground, seven never returned.
What is more tragic is that it was that very announcement that led residents into the dangerous space. At first, the office announced that "there was no need to move vehicles," then 30 minutes later changed its message to "the water is rising, so move them." But the one-way broadcast could not keep pace with the rapidly changing situation, and there was no way to tell residents who had already gone underground to "get out right now."
Less than two years later, in the early hours of August 1, 2024, a fire broke out in an electric vehicle parked in the underground garage of an apartment building in Cheongna, Incheon. This fire was different from the fires we had known. Once an EV battery catches fire, it is difficult to extinguish, and as the temperature rises sharply, it emits toxic gases including carbon monoxide and hydrogen fluoride, which is lethal to the human body. The toxic gas from the enclosed underground garage spread to upper floors through stairwells and ventilation ducts.
Twenty-three people, including a newborn, were transported to hospitals after inhaling smoke, and the fire was extinguished only after more than eight hours. The Cheongna apartment fire was an event that showed apartment housing now faces a different kind of "new disaster" than before.
This fire changed the landscape of apartment disaster response. It was the first time in Korea that an EV fire had spread into such extensive damage. That is why the government, within about a month, released joint measures across relevant ministries and hastily reviewed restrictions on EV access to underground garages and battery safety certification.
The problem is that there are not many means to respond to such fires. Battery fires are difficult to extinguish not only with portable fire extinguishers but even with ceiling sprinklers alone. In the end, evacuating residents to a safe place within the golden time has become as important as the response of putting out the fire.
Yet the alarm system that was supposed to warn of evacuation did not function properly. The fire signal was detected by the receiver in the management office, but the on-duty worker judged it to be a malfunction and disabled the function linking the alarm to the firefighting equipment. By the time they belatedly tried to restore it, the fire had already burned the relevant wiring.
The structural limits of the current alarm system were also exposed. Even in high-rise buildings of 16 stories or more, the system was not designed to automatically notify all residents on upper floors of a fire that occurred underground. Even though disasters can be accompanied by power outages and wiring damage, the alarm system relied excessively on electricity and wired connections.
Flooding and fire are entirely different disasters, but the cause that magnified the damage was the same: the failure to deliver the fact of the disaster and instructions on how to act in time. The current alarm system often stops at displaying a signal on the management office receiver. The response thereafter depends on the judgment of a single on-duty worker who checks the signal and makes an announcement.
In the early morning hours when the manager is away, in spaces where announcements cannot be heard, or in places where wired signals do not reach, this method is bound to collapse. Disaster response that relies solely on human judgment and management office announcements has now reached its limits.
Disaster management for apartment housing must move to a new stage. Managers must be able to grasp disaster situations regardless of time and place, even when power outages or wiring damage occur. Detecting a disaster quickly and notifying all households is the basic requirement. It must be possible to confirm whether residents actually received the alert, and to immediately notify again any households that have not confirmed. This is because, especially for new disasters that are difficult to extinguish, rapid evacuation is the key means of protecting lives.
One alternative for this is the "emergency disaster alert system." When a disaster is detected, it immediately notifies all households through wired and wireless communication networks, and managers can grasp in real time whether each household has received and confirmed the alert. For households that have not confirmed the alert, it notifies again through an automated response phone call to help residents evacuate.
In the case of "Oh-i-cheonsa," a representative emergency disaster alert system, it also uses mobile communication networks, allowing an emergency contact network to be maintained even when the power supply inside the building is cut off or some wiring is damaged. Even when the manager is outside the apartment, evacuation guidance can be sent to each household. It does not replace existing broadcasts and alarms, but is a safety device that fills the gaps these facilities cannot reach.
The foundation for such a solution has already begun to be laid. President Lee Jae-myung, during his tenure as Gyeonggi Province governor in 2021, took note of the need for a system that rapidly disseminates disaster information regardless of time and place, and incorporated that purpose into Gyeonggi Province's ordinance on disaster forecasting and warning.
Rep. Yeom Tae-young of the Democratic Party of Korea also proposed a partial amendment to the Multi-Family Housing Management Act last December, containing grounds for introducing an emergency disaster alert system and expanding budget support from local governments. This bill, intended to strengthen the safety of residents of multi-family housing nationwide, was tabled at a standing committee of the National Assembly this February.
Three out of four Koreans live in apartments and other multi-family housing. Establishing an uninterrupted alert system in the face of disasters that strike regardless of time and place and even accompany power outages is not a convenience to be chosen according to one's circumstances. It is a right to safety that everyone must be guaranteed.
The question left behind by the seven who lost their lives in Pohang and the 23 who inhaled smoke in Cheongna is clear. The next disaster will arrive without warning. This time, we must without fail establish an "emergency disaster alert" system so that not a single person is left behind within the golden time.
He is...
· Graduate of the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Meiji Gakuin University, Japan
· Former Vice President of Inca Internet
· Developer of 90 domestic and international patents in IT, security, and disaster fields
· Former Adjunct Professor, Department of Knowledge Information Security, Ajou University
· Former Chairman of the Internet Communication Committee, New Politics Alliance for Democracy
· Currently CEO of ThinkAT and Chairman of the Board of G&Talk
