Taegu Gas Explosion

Rescuers worked late tonight to seek survivors of a gas explosion during the morning rush-hour that killed at least 100 people, more than 60 of them teen-agers.

The explosion, at a leaking gas main at a subway construction site, hurled cars, trucks and buses into the air. Steel plates being used as a temporary road surface were thrown through the air in a deadly hail, crushing and dismembering pedestrians.

"I heard a loud bang and flames rose about 50 yards into the air, taking with it steel plates," a taxi driver said.

A spokesman for a disaster squad in Taegu, South Korea's third-largest city, about 150 miles south of Seoul, said 103 people were dead and about 200 injured, many critically. State television and local news reports quoted police officials who put the death toll at 110.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/29/world/toll-in...