24 Are Rescued From Collapsed Store in Seoul

SEOUL — For 52 hours, they battled thirst, fatigue and fears that they might never be freed from a ghastly tomb of rubble that entrapped them when a luxury department store complex in the South Korean capital collapsed over their heads.

But when rescue workers finally punched a hole through the mangled concrete and boosted them out Saturday, 24 cleaning workers knew they had managed a miracle.

The survivors, greased with vegetable oil and liquid soap, squeezed through a narrow tunnel only 16 inches wide in places after being trapped Thursday in a basement room. One by one, they emerged to glaring spotlights and thunderous applause from the hundreds of relatives, rescue workers and journalists who had gathered.

One woman fainted when she saw her husband among those rescued.

The survivors appeared to be in good condition, although one man who tried to walk out staggered and had to be carried. Wrapped in blankets, many with their heads wrapped in towels to guard against the blinding camera flashes and lights, they were taken to hospitals.

“I lived through this, I can get through anything,” Park Chun Hwa, 64, said from her hospital bed as she was surrounded by four daughters, according to news agency reports.

The rescue was a high point of round-the-clock efforts to save more than 200 people believed trapped beneath the wreckage of the Sampoong Department Store in one of Seoul’s toniest neighborhoods. The disaster has killed more than 100 people and injured more than 900. More than 200 remain missing.

So far, 13 teams of more than 1,000 rescue workers, equipped with electric saws, car jacks and sound-detecting equipment from U.S. military bases in Okinawa and Hawaii, have saved at least 60 people.

A six-person U.S. military team is at the site operating the highly sensitive equipment, which can detect any sound vibration within a 20-mile radius, but the noise of other rescue operations is interfering with its effectiveness, a U.S. military official said.

Nine cranes have also been deployed to remove smashed cars and other large pieces of wreckage.

The Red Cross asked relatives to provide the numbers of pagers or cellular phones that missing shoppers may have been carrying. Officials said they hoped that rescuers or sound detectors might hear the devices beeping, even if the owners were unconscious.

Authorities believe that shoddy construction and unstable ground--Sampoong was built in 1989 atop a landfill--caused the 6-year-old, multilevel complex of more than 550 shops to collapse. Although shop owners reported cracks in ceilings, warping floors and broken water pipes hours in advance, store executives failed to evacuate the 700 employees and hundreds of shoppers.

Sampoong President Lee Joon and other executives from the store and the Woosung Construction Co.--which laid the foundation and supervised the project--have been arrested on charges of manslaughter. Top store officials fled minutes before the structure collapsed.

Despite Saturday’s rescue, tensions are rising among relatives of the missing over the slow pace of operations. About 700 family members marched to the site in protest when rescue efforts were halted after authorities noted that the store’s southern wing was leaning precariously. That wing had tilted at least five degrees, and officials feared it may give way at any moment.

Riot police armed with shields formed a barricade to prevent distraught relatives from entering the site; some scuffles were reported.

Early Sunday, rescuers resumed their search after a six-hour wait while workers shored up the leaning wall with wire ropes.

Authorities believe that several other people may still be alive in three other pockets, but rescue efforts have been hampered by fears of another collapse, a shortage of equipment and persistent underground fires.

The time needed to carefully chip through the wreckage to avoid bringing it down on top of survivors has also delayed rescues.

Rescue workers had discovered the cleaners about 11 a.m. Saturday, when they heard them yelling for help. As the rescue team yelled back, the trapped victims burst into cheers. But it took 13 hours to clear the tunnel.

The workers--14 women and 10 men, mostly in their 50s--had been changing their uniforms in adjoining basement rooms when the building collapsed. When their room began filling with smoke, the women broke through a window and joined the men to begin the two-day wait for freedom.

Fighting hunger and thirst, they pinched each other to stay awake, fearing they would die if they fell asleep. A steel pipe was sent down to provide fresh air, water and food.

Finally, the rescue team punched through the wreckage, and the survivors slid out, one by one.

Cho Soon, elected Seoul mayor last week, declared that the city would not rest until rescue operations are complete.

“We’ll never declare an end to the search until all survivors are pulled from the debris,” he said.