Battery fire in South Korea kills two dozen workers

A deadly factory fire that began after lithium batteries exploded has killed at least 22 people in South Korea, with two more unaccounted for.

The explosion and subsequent fire began yesterday at the Aricell battery plant in Hwaseong city, 50km south of Seoul.

Local television footage showed smoke plumes and explosions as firefighters tried to contain the fire. Part of the factory roof collapsed.

A fire official, Kim Jin-young, said 18 Chinese, one Laotian and two South Korean workers were amongst the casualties. One has not been identified and another is still missing. A further eight people were injured, two seriously. One hundred workers were in the factory when the explosion occurred.

The Aricell factory housed around 35,000 battery cells. Evidently the fire began when a series of battery cells exploded but it wasn’t clear what instigated the initial event. Lithium-ion batteries sometimes explode if damaged or overheated.

The blaze was difficult to counter initially because there were fears of further explosions. Once the fire took hold, it would have spread quickly. So the workers had little time to escape, according to a disaster prevention expert from Daejeon University, Kim Jae-ho.

He said “Battery materials such as nickel are hihgly flammable so often there is not enough time to respond compared to a fire caused by other materials.”

Lithium reacts intensely with water so firefighters had use dry sand to extinguish the blaze. It took several hours to bring it under control.

Even after extinguishing such a fire, it may reignite thereafter without warning because of the ongoing chemical reaction.