A deadly fire at a lithium battery factory in South Korea has claimed the lives of 22 workers, most of whom were Chinese. The blaze broke out at the Aricell battery factory in Hwaseong and was put out by local fire officials. However, the cause of the explosion is still unknown.
The intensity of the fire made it difficult to identify the deceased workers, with 18 being Chinese. Two others sustained serious injuries from the incident. This fire marks the deadliest accident in South Korea since 2020 when 38 people died in a construction site accident near Seoul.
Videos shared on social media showed thick smoke billowing from the factory where 102 people were working at the time of the fire. While rare, lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish due to their explosive nature. For instance, it took 150 firefighters four days to put out a fire in a Tesla “Megapack” in Australia last year. In another incident, a container ship carrying over 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries had to be moored off the coast of Alaska because of a fire on board.
Neither Korea’s National Fire Agency nor Aricell responded immediately to requests for comments outside normal working hours.
