On the 12th, a week after the collapse at the Ulsan thermal power plant, efforts continued at the site to rescue two people still trapped in the debris.
At a press briefing that morning, the Central Accident Response Headquarters said, "We will prioritize rescuing one person trapped in the area of the collapsed boiler tower Unit 5 that is close to Unit 4," and added, "To find the remaining one person who is still missing, we will expand the search area by mobilizing all available means, including search dogs and video detectors."
Fire authorities plan to continue operations while preventing additional collapse of Unit 5, where the accident occurred. Kim Jeong-sik, head of the Fire Prevention and Safety Division at Ulsan Nambu Fire Station, said, "We cannot rule out additional structural collapse, so we will secure stability first and then enter to carry out the rescue," adding, "Although the risk of secondary collapse and the large amount of debris make operations difficult, we will do our best so the rescue subjects can return to their families as soon as possible."
About 70 rescue workers and 40 civilian demolition experts are being deployed in rotating teams for the day's rescue and search. It is said that one team of five rescue workers and four civilian experts enters the site at a time.
Overnight, fire authorities recovered the bodies of two of the trapped workers. Fire authorities recovered a person surnamed Kim, 63, whose location had been identified, at about 10:14 p.m. the previous day, and a person surnamed Lee, 65, who had been classified as missing, at about 5:19 a.m. that day. They were able to recover the bodies after removing debris throughout the night.
Of the seven people trapped in the accident, the official death toll has risen to five. The remaining two are still buried.
On the 6th, at the Ulsan thermal power plant, the boiler tower collapsed during boiler tower dismantling work, burying seven of the nine people who were carrying out the demolition.