Vehicle fire in tunnel

[Anchor]

This morning (June 23), a vehicle caught fire inside a tunnel in downtown Busan.

The tunnel quickly filled with smoke, causing drivers to abandon their vehicles and evacuate on foot, resulting in severe traffic congestion during the morning commute.

Kim Arnae reports.

[Report]

A passenger car running inside the tunnel suddenly emits smoke from the front hood and crashes into the car ahead.

Flames soon follow, and the cars behind quickly change lanes to escape the tunnel.

The tunnel is soon filled with thick black smoke, and anxious drivers abandon their cars and evacuate on foot.

[Lee Soo-hyuk/Witness: "They were telling us to evacuate one by one from the front, so everyone got out of their cars and evacuated to the back. The smoke was coming in."]

Around 8 AM this morning, a vehicle caught fire in the Hwangnyeong Tunnel connecting downtown Busan.

The fire started about two-thirds of the way into the tunnel.

As the front was blocked by smoke, drivers had to walk back about 1.2 km to evacuate.

The fire was extinguished in 20 minutes without any casualties, but both directions of the tunnel were closed, and the area was chaotic with abandoned vehicles.

Vehicle traffic resumed after an hour, but severe traffic congestion occurred during the morning commute.

[Driver: "It's completely blocked right now, so it seems like an emergency. It's an emergency here, but personally, I'm also in an emergency."]

When a fire occurs in a tunnel, current law allows evacuation to the opposite direction tunnel through emergency escape routes installed every 250 meters.

However, the Hwangnyeong Tunnel, which was completed in 1995 before the law was enacted, has only two emergency escape routes and no emergency parking areas.

The police are investigating the exact cause of the fire based on the driver's statement that the fire started near the engine and that the braking system had malfunctioned.

KBS News, Kim Arnae.