Police form 33-member team to investigate Bucheon factory fire ... “Charges including negligent injury to be pursued”

[Financial News] Police have launched a full-scale investigation into a fire at a metal injection-molding and painting factory in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, that killed one firefighter who responded to the blaze and injured seven others. Based on the forensic findings and statements, police plan to pursue charges against company officials, including occupational negligence causing injury and occupationally caused fire.
The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said on the 17th that it had formed a 33-member dedicated investigation team led by Jang Seong-yun, head of the Metropolitan Criminal Investigation Unit, at the rank of senior superintendent.
The team consists of 25 investigators from the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency’s Metropolitan Criminal Investigation Unit (Serious Accidents Investigation Division) and eight members of its forensic investigation team, with no personnel from local police stations.
The team has been conducting a joint forensic examination at the fire scene in Nae-dong, Ojeong-gu, Bucheon, since 9:30 a.m. that day, together with 23 people from four relevant agencies, including the fire authorities, the National Forensic Service and the Korea Electrical Safety Corporation.
Investigators are examining the area around a thinner-cleaning machine in the factory’s third-floor cleaning room, where the fire is believed to have started, to determine the exact cause, including the point of origin and whether there were mechanical or electrical defects.
They are focusing in particular on how the flames and black smoke spread so rapidly that two firefighters who had responded to the initial blaze were trapped before they could evacuate.
Alongside the on-site examination, police are questioning factory officials as witnesses about working conditions at the time of the fire and whether safety protocols were followed.
The previous day, a fire broke out at the factory on the third floor of a five-story building at around 8:38 a.m. and was fully extinguished at around 11:06 a.m., 2 hours and 28 minutes later. Of the two firefighters in their 40s who were deployed with the first response team and became trapped while fighting the fire, firefighter A, who was transported in cardiac arrest, ultimately died while receiving treatment at a hospital; the other was also seriously injured.
Four other firefighters and two factory officials also received hospital treatment for heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation, bringing the total number of casualties to eight.


[email protected] Yoo Seon-jun Reporter