Sampooing Department Store Collapse (Preventable Disasters Pt. 1)

The Sampoong Department Store was originally slated to be an office building, but during construction in 1987, the building chairman, Lee Joon, changed the plans. This change required that several support columns be cut away at to make room for escalators for the shoppers. When the contractors refused to do something this stupid, Lee fired them and hired his own construction company to do the job.

After it opened in June 1990, the store was immensely popular, amassing an average of 40,000 people daily for the first five years. The store made a ton of money but Lee didn’t get greedy about it – just kidding, he totally added a fifth floor smack on the top of the first four. And what better to put on top of your support beam-deficient department store but a total of eight restaurants! But since Korean restaurant patrons sit on the floor, you have to heat the concrete base with heavy hot water pipes. Restaurants cannot be too warm though, so the air conditioners will have to go right on the roof there. All of this amounted to an elaborate, multi-ton, unsupported cap on the building that already lacked adequate structure. And when the construction company asked to build this extremely risky fifth floor? They refused and they were promptly fired and replaced.

Cracks began appearing in the ceiling of the fifth floor in April, 1995. It was at this point Lee Joon looked up at the damage and instructed his employees to move the merchandise from directly under the cracks to the basement.

On June 29, the cracks were so bad that the whole fifth floor was shut down and the air conditioning was cut off in the summer heat. Since the number of patrons was higher than usual, greedy Mr. Lee refused to issue evacuation orders. But building executives got the hell out of there (just in case).

As civil engineers were called in to inspect the damage and concluded that structural failure was eminent. That day, loud bangs were heard resonating from the fifth floor and the vibration from the air conditioner worsened the cracks – they were now 4 inches wide. A mere 52 minutes before the collapse, the store owners were aware of the damage and refused to evacuate. At 5:50 the building began to fall, and workers sounded the evacuation alarms. The Sampooing Department Store collapsed at 5:57, with the air conditioner crashing through the fifth floor and the roof given way. The support columns weakened to allow for escalators then buckled. Within a third of a minute, the building was pancaked, trapping 1,500 people and killing 501. The damage totaled US$216 million.