Commuters Prevent a Major Tragedy in Tunnel

There has been an event that could have turned out to a major accident when a bus turned over inside Hongjimoon Tunnel on a city freeway on the morning of June 6.

When the incident occurred, the tunnel turned into a mess but in the midst of this, some passengers broke windows to save other passengers and started extinguishing the fire using the fire extinguishers on board the bus, thus preventing a possibly worse tragedy.

The accident occurred around 9:15 a.m. when a church bus of 25 passenger seats heading to Seongsan Bridge bumped into a vehicle in front in the middle point of Hongjimoon Tunnel which connects Hongun-dong in Seodamoon-gu and Pyungchang-dong in Jongro-gu. Then the bus turned over and hit the wall, breaking out into flames. With this chaos, the bus was entirely destructed by the fire and then the fire moved onto the vehicle as well.

“The bus ran into my vehicle from the back and then hit the wall of the tunnel. I got out of the car and the tunnel when the vehicle stopped moving due to burned out tires,” stated Gyung Cheol Kim (33), the driver of the vehicle.

There were no deaths in the accident but three people from the bus were seriously injured. Moreover, a number of people who suffered minor injuries reported to be 45 people.

There was a big chaos when about 100 drivers who were already in the tunnel left their vehicles behind and escaped out of the tunnel due to the smoke and reminders of the Daegu subway fire.

It could have been a more deadly tragedy since all the electricity and lights went off in the tunnel right after the accident, with the ventilation system also shutting down. When electricity in the tunnel got turned off at 9:19 a.m. right after the accident, the tunnel management office operated the electric generator to turn the light back on but the ventilation was still out. It was after 19 minutes since the interruption when they started to remove the poisonous gas by re-operating the ventilation system. The ventilation system began operating again when the management staff located between Hongjimoon Tunnel and Jeongrung Tunnel ran to the Machinery Room to power up the interception. Personnel from the management office clarified that they “couldn’t figure out the cause of the interruption.”

Right after the accident, 27 fire engines and 85 fire fighters arrived on the scene and started the actual extinguishing process. The fire was out in about 40 minutes.

“The handle was out of order,” said the bus driver. Police are investigating the details of the accident under the assumption of the probable bus defect. Hongjimoon Tunnel, which was completed in 1999, is the longest twin tunnel (3 lanes) in Seoul.

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