Gyeonggi Province Conducts Joint Exercise to Prepare for Large-scale Social Disasters

SUWON, South Korea, Dec. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Gyeonggi Province recently conducted a joint exercise in preparation for social disasters with the mobilization of 32 public and private organizations.

This exercise, the first joint inter-agency undertaking of its kind in Gyeonggi Province, reflects efforts to fulfill the pledge made by Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong Yeon to safeguard the lives and safety of the residents against possible threats.

Previously, Governor Kim had announced safety measures for Gyeonggi residents, which include the implementation of joint exercises in preparation for social disasters such as the crowd crush that occurred in Itaewon, Seoul, on October 29.

The exercise was carried out in sequence from report receipt, situational assessment and dissemination, and accident response to the restoration and recovery of the disaster site.

The scenario of the exercise was as follows: a crowd crush took place at 9 a.m. on a malfunctioning escalator moving from the second to the ground floor of Lotte Mall Suwon. A fire rescue team, dispatched after receipt of reports, arrived on site within ten minutes and started rescue activities while quickly evacuating people from the department store as in a real-world situation.

Of particular note, training dummies were piled up on the lower part of the escalator to create a difficult rescue situation with immovable bodies. The rescue team classified victims as either emergency or urgent cases and marked them accordingly with either red or yellow armbands. According to the classification, some received CPR while others were evacuated from the department store.

Among the drills adding to the turmoil, a fake wall collapsed around 9:20 a.m. and buried people who were trying to escape, and a collision between a large bus and a passenger car was also enacted. To rescue and evacuate the injured, the upper part of the passenger car was cut out and the windows of the bus were broken.

"This was probably the first time in Korea that such a large-scale exercise was conducted in preparation for a social disaster instead of natural disasters... The Gyeonggi Provincial Government and all relevant institutions will do their utmost to prevent such disasters from happening," Governor Kim commented after the exercise.

Gyeonggi Province will continuously undertake joint training with relevant agencies on a regular basis so as to prepare for a diverse range of social disasters in the future.

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