Fire at Coupang warehouse in South Korea burns for more than 52 hours
More than 52 hours after it began, the Incheon blaze had forced evacuations and injured one firefighter at a Coupang hub serving the Seoul metro area.
Firefighters were still battling a Coupang logistics center blaze in Incheon more than 52 hours after it began, turning a single warehouse fire into a prolonged emergency at one of South Korea’s busiest delivery hubs. The facility serves the Seoul metropolitan area, and the extended burn raised immediate concerns about damage to stored goods, delays in shipments and the strain on local emergency crews.
The fire broke out at the company’s Incheon logistics center on July 18 and started on an upper floor, described in one report as the sixth floor. South Korean fire authorities escalated the response from Level 1 to Level 2 as flames spread, a sign that the incident quickly moved beyond a routine warehouse fire. Yonhap News Agency said one firefighter was injured while battling the blaze.
Authorities also ordered nearby residents to evacuate after the fire-damaged building raised collapse fears, adding a public-safety dimension to what began as an industrial incident. The warehouse is in Incheon, west of Seoul, and sits in a logistics corridor that helps feed the capital region’s next-day and same-day delivery networks. That makes the fire more than an isolated property loss: it hit a facility built for high-volume throughput, where interruptions can ripple through inventory handling and routing across the metropolitan area.
The cause has not been confirmed. A Reuters-linked post said authorities suspected the fire may have begun with an explosion in an underground level where urethane was being used, but that remained only a suspicion. The location of the blaze, the upper-floor origin and the long duration all point to difficult conditions for crews inside a large, densely packed warehouse.
Coupang apologized for the fire and said it would actively support firefighting efforts and cooperate with investigators. The company also said it would support nearby residents affected by the incident. For South Korea’s logistics sector, the warehouse fire exposed how quickly a single fulfillment center can become both an industrial-safety crisis and a supply-chain disruption when a major distribution node goes offline.
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