Hundreds evacuate swaying building in eastern Seoul

Hundreds of people evacuated the 39-story TechnoMart mall in Seoul’s Gwangjin district Tuesday after the high-rise building rocked up and down for about 10 minutes.

Lee Jae-mun, 35, who works on the 30th floor, said, “Since last winter, the building has often shaken but it shook so severely today that I felt nausea,” adding, “When the swaying got intense to the extent that desk lamps moved, more than 80 workers cut a morning’s meeting short and ran out of the building.”

Another tenant said, “The quivers were felt from the 30th floor and higher and continued for about 10 minutes.”

The quivers caused 300 out of the building`s estimated 3,000 tenants to evacuate. A source at a Gwangjin fire station said, “With tenants on the 30th floor and higher evacuating the building en masse, those on lower floors also fled,” adding, “The cause of the swaying remains unknown.”

The Korea Meteorological Administration said no signs of an earthquake were detected in Seoul. No buildings other than the high-rise shopping mall swayed.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday shortly after the incident, the Gwangjin Ward Office conducted a safety check in cooperation with fire authorities within its jurisdiction and ordered all tenants to evacuate the building for three days.

Certain tenants refused to flee, with one saying, “How can they place an evacuation order with no countermeasures?”

○ Variety of causes blamed for incident

Opinions on the cause of the swaying differ among experts but ruled out a quake. Other possible causes mentioned were the sinking of the ground due to heavy rains and structural problems with the skyscraper.

Gwon Gi-hyeok, a construction engineering professor at the University of Seoul, said, “The sinking of the ground can cause the upper part of a skyscraper to shake,” adding, “TechnoMart is close to the Han River and in an area prone to floods, so all this might have undermined its underground support.”

Another expert said, however, “The possibility of the ground sinking is low as no quivers were felt in other buildings nearby.”

Given that only the upper part of the skyscraper was rocked, problems with a cooling tower can be blamed. Korean Structural Engineers Association President Lee Mun-gon said, “Excessive movement of cooling towers or concentration of weight in certain floors caused the sway.”

The 1995 collapse of Sampoong Department Store in southern Seoul was blamed on structural alterations to the building and its inability to withstand the weight of water in the pool on top of the building.