A fire burns at a U.S. Army warehouse in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 24, 2024, in this screenshot from a YTN broadcast on YouTube. (YTN via YouTube)
A warehouse fire on a U.S. Army supply base that began Thursday evening and drew mutual aid from city firefighters in Busan, South Korea, was extinguished 13 hours later, according to the Army and local news reports.
The warehouse under renovation at the Busan Storage Center was reported ablaze at 6:35 p.m., according to spokesman Phil Molter of U.S. Army Garrison Daegu. The cause was not immediately known, he said by email at 9:58 p.m. Thursday.
The garrison called on mutual aid agreements with the Busan Fire Department to fight the growing blaze, according to Molter and South Korean news stations.
By 8 p.m., as many as 11 fire stations had responded, according to YTN broadcast news. No injuries were reported as of 10 p.m.
More than 160 personnel and 51 pieces of fire equipment were on site, according to Yonhap news agency Thursday.
At 11 p.m. Thursday, firefighters were dousing spot fires at the site in Beomil-dong, a waterfront section of city, according to another email from Molter and local news.
The empty warehouse was unoccupied when the fire broke out, Molter said.
The fire occurred in the cold storage area of the center, also known as the 55th Quartermaster Depot, and because of the sandwich panel construction and flammable materials at the construction site proved difficult to contain, according to a report Friday in Money Today, a South Korean financial news website.
The U.S. Army established the site as a supply depot at the start of the Korean War in 1950.
Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, is roughly 200 miles southeast of Seoul. The coastal city contains South Korea’s largest port and is also home to the headquarters of U.S. Navy Forces Korea.