This is from Reuters. Pray for the families of the victims.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030218/ts_nm/korea_fire_dc&e=1
More Than 130 Dead in S.Korea Subway Fire
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By Samuel Len and Kim Kyung-hoon
TAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) - More than 130 people were killed and 99 were missing in South Korea (news - web sites) on Tuesday after flames and smoke engulfed two crowded subway trains following an arson attack, officials said.
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Slideshow: S. Korea Subway Fire
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The mayor of the southeastern city of Taegu said a 56-year-old male with a history of mental illness was suspected of starting the blaze at the end of the morning rush hour.
A witness said the man had set fire to flammable liquid in a milk carton and tossed it into a carriage.
Officials said a second train pulled into the station as the blaze took hold. The two trains, each with six carriages, had a total of up to 400 people on board.
Many struggled in vain to escape the inferno that reduced the trains to metal skeletons and sent black, acrid smoke belching into the sky for hours after the fire started.
Television footage showed rescuers covering up charred bodies in the ash and soot-filled carriages, a burned ladies' shoe among the wreckage. At street level, relatives and friends gathered anxiously to look through a list of names or held each other and cried.
Rescue official Lee Hyong-kyun said the fire ignited seat fabric and floor tiles.
"If you ignite a flammable liquid like gasoline inside a closed space, what you'll get is something very close to an explosion," he said.
"There would have been hardly any time to escape."
As dense smoke billowed from subway air vents, soot-covered firefighters in orange suits and with breathing apparatus dragged bodies and the injured up blackened stairwells.
"MOTHER, THERE'S SMOKE EVERYWHERE"
One man, whose wife was trapped by the inferno, told South Korean television he had received a desperate call from her mobile phone.
"Help me," he quoted her as saying. "There's a fire on the subway. The door is locked."
It was a heart-wrenching call others were to make.
"My daughter called me twice at 9.57 a.m. crying 'mother there's smoke everywhere, but the door won't open!" said a woman at a makeshift crisis center outside Taegu's Joongangro Station.
An official at the Taegu Emergency Rescue Center said 134 were confirmed dead, 136 were injured and 99 people were missing.
Another tally on a board at the emergency center later had a more cautious confirmed death toll of 50, but put the number of missing at 152, with 135 injured. Figures switched throughout the day, but edged inexorably higher.
Rescue officials said they would tow the carriages to a hub station on Tuesday evening so forensic experts could examine victims' remains.
A fireman in Taegu, which is 120 miles southeast of Seoul, said the trains had been gutted.
"Everything is gone," said Sung Bo-hun, who was inside the subway until 7:40 p.m. "You can't recognize the people inside. It is all black and gray."
An employee LG Telecoms said the carrier was helping people find out for sure if their relatives were on the trains by tracing mobile phone signals.
"We have been receiving inquiries from family members trying to pinpoint the location of the last signal of their loved ones," said the employee.
"About half the people who turned to us for assistance were told that the last traceable signal came from under where we are standing now," he said as he stood above the station.
More than 100 people were killed and another 100 injured in a gas explosion on Taegu's only subway line in 1995.
PASSENGERS STRUGGLE WITH ATTACKER
Yonhap quoted one witness as saying passengers had tried in vain to tackle the suspect in Tuesday's blaze. Another said many passengers were trapped behind closed doors.
"We are still trying to assess the situation as passengers are being transported to hospital. We don't know exactly how many passengers have been affected, but the fire appears to have been caused by arson," a fire department official said by telephone.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites) sent his condolences to the families of victims. Prime Minister Kim Suk-soo was to hold an emergency meeting involving key government departments on the disaster at 8 a.m. EST.
Most of those injured were being treated for smoke inhalation.
"They were seriously injured," chief nurse Shin Kyung-in at the nearby Kwak hospital told Reuters, referring to the 19 people admitted to her emergency unit so far.
The single subway line runs through the central part of Taegu, a well-established center for the textile and dyeing industry as well fashion. A second subway line is being built.
Kim Mi-ja, a 45-year-old housewife, stood outside the station, her eyes bloodshot from crying.
"I've been here all day waiting to hear anything about my older sister. I don't know how something like this could happen."