On June 29, 1995, the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea, completely collapsed. It was the deadliest modern building collapse until the New York attacks and the deadliest unintentional building collapse until the Savar building collapse in 2013. The tragedy s is produced due to multiple errors made by the designers and contractors who built the store and the negligence of the store owner. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayThe structure was built on top of a landfill, it was originally designed for an office building, but Halfway through construction, the president wanted to do it in a department store. Many engineers working on the project warned owner Joon that the changes were dangerous, but he fired them. During the disaster, 1,500 people were trapped, in which more than 500 died and 937 suffered non-fatal injuries. Rescue teams did not begin searching until the next day and the search was halted due to the instability of the remains and the risk to rescuers. Figure 1 illustrates the department's facilities for each floor. Construction of the Sampoong began in 1987, it was initially designed to be an office, but the building's future president, soon to be Lee, midway through construction, wanted it to be a department store. The process involved reducing the number of support columns to accommodate the escalators. The contractors refused to make these changes because they were unsafe, Lee Joon, the future president, ignored their concerns and hired another construction company for the construction. Sampoong Department Store opened to the public on July 7, 1990, attracting approximately 40,000 people per day during the building's five years of existence. The store consisted of north and south wings, connected by an atrium. (Almarwae Mohammed 2017). Lee Joon ignored safety procedures and risked the lives of everyone involved in the incident, even after knowing the possible consequences. In April 1995, cracks began to appear in the ceiling of the fifth floor of the south wing. Lee and his management team's only response was to move merchandise and stores from the top floor to the basement. On the morning of June 29, the number of cracks in the neighborhood increased dramatically, prompting managers to close the top floor and turn off the air conditioning. Store management failed to close the building or issue formal evacuation orders because the number of customers in the building was unusually high and they did not want to lose the day's revenue. However, the leaders themselves left the scene as a precaution. (Guo, H. et al. 2010). Civil engineering experts were invited to inspect the structure, but they only carried out a cursory check during which they declared the building was at risk of collapse. About five hours before the collapse, several loud bangs were heard from the upper floors, with vibrations from the air conditioning causing the cracks in the slabs to widen even further. After the cracks were already 10 cm wide, it was realized that collapse was inevitable and an emergency meeting was called. In a meeting. The directors suggested that all the costumes be evacuated. However, JoonLee refused, fearing he would lose income. Joon Lee left the building himself because he was aware of the dangersbut did not evacuate the customers. On June 29, the north wing of the Sampoong store collapsed, killing more than 500 people. A large number of deaths are due in part to the apparent lack of concern on the part of the building's owners/occupants, who failed to note signs of serious structural distress before the collapse and failed to evacuate the occupants . The five-story building was a flat structure with elevator shafts and services located in rigid shear wall structures between the two wings and the building's ends. (NJ Gardner and others 2002). Since the critical failure, it only took about twenty seconds for the entire south wing of the structure to collapse. In Figure 2, it illustrates the Sampoong Department Store after its collapse. Additionally, property damage is estimated to be approximately $216 million. The restaurant floor had a heated concrete base called an “ondol”, with hot water pipes running through it; the presence of the 4-foot-thick (1.2 m) “ondol” significantly increased the weight and thickness of the slab. Due to the presence of the fifth floor, the columns supported four times the maximum weight they were designed to support. Additionally, the building's conditioning unit was also installed on the roof, creating a load of 45 tonnes (50 tonnes), four times the design limit. (Guo, H. et al. 2010). In 1993 the air conditioners were moved above column 5E where the most visible cracks were, the purpose of the air conditioning was to cover the cracks, the cracks got worse because of the columns supporting the fifth floor . According to witnesses, the collapse started from the fifth floor. The investigating committee concluded that the collapse began at column 5E, on the fifth floor. The reasons for the collapse were noted as design errors, construction defects, poor construction quality control, reduction in cross-section of column support on the fifth floor. Figure 3 illustrates how column 5E was damaged and Figure 4 illustrates the vibrations of the air conditioning units. Around 5 p.m. local time, the ceiling of the fifth floor began to sink, store employees blocked access to the fifth floor. Before the incident, the store was filled with hundreds of customers, but Joon Lee did not feel the need to close the store or make repairs during this time. When the building began to make creaking noises around 5:52 p.m., workers began to sound alarms and evacuate the building, but it was too late. Around 5:52 p.m., the roof gave way and their packaging units crashed into the building. The fifth floor is already overloaded. The main columns weakened to allow the insertion of the escalators, collapsed in turn and the south wing of the building folded into the basement. Less than 20 seconds after the disaster, all the columns of the south wing building gave way, killing 502 people and trapping more than 1,500 inside. (Alma Rae Mohammed 2017). It's obvious that the whole tragedy could have been avoided if they had evacuated the customers in time, but Joon Lee didn't deem such an approach necessary. Joon Lee was aware that the collision was inevitable, so it was very selfish to do nothing and put so many people's lives in danger. After the disaster, Lan Chung, professor of civil engineering and Professor Oan Chul Choi, head of the Department of Architecture, began to investigate why the structure collapsed. The first thing they noticed during their investigation was that the structure of the store was a slab structure.