Udec Corporation

Historical Moment: 1999 Inchon Karaoke Bar Fire

Fire swept through a four-story building crowded with diners and drinkers, killing at least 55 people, many of them teen-agers on October 30, 1999. Over 80 people were injured.

Most of the victims - mainly high school students were out enjoying themselves at after school festivals - were trapped in a billiard parlor on the third floor, or inside a second-floor bar that illegally catered to underage drinkers.

The fire started in the basement that was undergoing renovations. Workers broke a light bulb, sending sparks into open tins of paint thinner.

The 20-year-old building apparently had no sprinklers and fire alarms and the flames quickly spread. Hundreds of people were trapped on the top two floors. There were few emergency exits and many of the windows were blocked.

Flames raced through a narrow corridor, burning plastic furniture and carpets. Everyone in a ground-floor restaurant got out of the building. But more than 120 people in upper floors were trapped, killed by the toxic gas that quickly filled the building.

When fire engines finally arrived at the scene, it took only 40 minutes to put out the blaze. However, many of those who survive were unable to breathe on their own. One doctor was quoted as saying their lungs had simply burnt out.

The building was in an entertainment district in the center of Inchon, South Korea’s third largest city. A report on state-run television said it was about 20 years old and lacked basic fire prevention systems, like sprinklers.

President Kim Dae-jung ordered a tightening of safety regulations for clubs and bars. The tragedy has once again highlighted South Korea’s lax safety standards.

Are you aware that not every exit sign, emergency light, or emergency light fixture is safe? Just because you can see an exit with the light shining, doesn’t mean it works with the power off.

UDEC’S auto-test is the difference between safety and Russian roulette with the lives of the people inside your building. Auto-test makes emergency lighting easy, but more important; it is the safest way to ensure emergency lighting is there when it’s needed.

UDEC’S Featured Product: Emergency Light Fixtures: Compact with Remote Capability - Plain Vanilla Choice

Completely self-contained. Fully Automatic Operation.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique

Historical Moment: Ohio Fraternity House Fire

A fire started by a cigarette thought to have been extinguished, re-ignited during the night, damaging a fraternity house and killing a 19-year old resident.

A campus security officer responding to an early morning disturbance call at a nearby fraternity house notice the smoke coming from a second floor window. He reported the fire to his dispatch center, which notified the fire department.

The guard entered the smoky building, heard the fire alarms operating, and started the evacuation of the students, who heard the alarms, but were not leaving the building.

Three minutes later the fire department arrived, to find smoke and flames coming from the rear of the building. Assured by the fraternity staff that everyone had been evacuated, the firefighters started the battling of the flames. The attack crew reported severe heat and smoke as low as 6+ inches from the floor as they advanced to the origin of the fire, and knocked down the blaze.

A primary search of the fire floor revealed one student dead in a bathroom a few feet from an enclosed exit stairwell.

The fire’s origin was in a room in the middle of the second floor, two rooms away from the one in which the student who died was sleeping. Earlier that night in the first room, the residents had extinguished a small fire at one end of the couch, which was caused by careless smoking.

An hour and a half later, the room’s resident woke to find the fire had re-ignited. He left his room and returned with a fire extinguisher, which didn’t work. Leaving his room again, he left the door open.

The student who was two rooms away tried to escape to the nearby stairwell, but succumbed to the heavy smoke. His elevated blood alcohol level was 0.15, which investigators believed played a role in his death.

The building had passed previous inspections, meeting all safety requirements for fast evacuation.

Are you aware that not every exit sign, emergency light, or emergency light fixture is safe? Just because you can see an exit with the light shining, doesn’t mean it works with the power off.

UDEC’S auto-test is the difference between safety and Russian roulette with the lives of the people inside your building. Auto-test makes emergency lighting easy, but more important; it is the safest way to ensure emergency lighting is there when it’s needed.

UDEC’S Featured Product: Emergency Light Fixtures: Dual Beveled Integral Incandescent Heads
Completely self-contained. Fully automatic operation.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. Udec Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions with 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: The 1996 Ozone Disco Fire

March 20, 1996 was a night of fun celebrating the end of the school year when the worst night club fire in the Philippines took the lives of over 150 young people.

The Ozone Disco Pub in suburban Manila was a place where upper middle-class teens went to be seen. It was jammed that night with almost 400 celebrating college and high school students and the staff serving them.

There was food, drink and a tiny dance floor wedged between the disk jockey’s station and the bar. It was just after midnight, and the dancing and drinking were in full swing when sparks flew from the disk jockey’s booth. Other survivors thought it was an explosion from the kitchen, but they all agree that next there was the darkness and the smoke.

When everything went dark, and the young customers realized that there was a fire and only one way out — they panicked and stampeded for the exit.

One female survivor described the scene later. “Suddenly the lights went out. I thought it was a gimmick, but then suddenly somebody shouted ‘Fire!’ All I can remember is that there was panic…and a lot of pushing and shoving.”

The heat from the blaze was so intense that many bodies were reported to be charred and fused together. Authorities and family members attempted to identify the badly burned bodies from bits of jewelry and shoes.

Hermilo Ocampo, one of the owners, said the disco had a safety certificate from the Bureau of Fire Protection. He suggested that the high toll might have been caused by the panic triggered by the heavy smoke, making it difficult for people to find the exit.

Safety officials said the club had been approved for the maximum of 35 people, and the emergency exit was blocked by a new building next door. They confirmed that Phillipine club and restaurant owners often found it cheaper to bribe officials than to honor building regulations.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

Udec’s Featured Product: Emergency Light Fixtures: Emergency Lighting Units
Emergency and economical unit with “EZ” install back plate feature has modern appearance and low maintenance. Optional Self Diagnostic/Self Test feature offers the ultimate in worry free maintenance and reliability.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. Udec Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: 2006 Tennessee Clothes Dryer Fire

Two women, one handicapped, died in a fire when the clothes dryer in their rented single-family home malfunctioned. The wood-frame house, which had an asphalt roof, was not sprinklered.

One of the women awoke around 8:30 a.m. to the smell of smoke and telephoned the fire department. The fire had spread up a wall, across the ceiling, and up an open stairwell to the attic, where it traveled the length of the house above the living areas.

The handicapped woman died at the scene. The other woman suffered burns and smoke inhalation when she tried to rescue her roommate and died at the hospital. The house and its contents were completely destroyed.

After the fire was extinguished, investigators determined that the clothes dryer’s motor malfunctioned, causing clothing and carpeting to overheat and ignite.

One of the most common causes of home fires is clothes dryers, usually because of improper care. “Failure to clean” is the leading factor contributing to clothes-dryer fires in residential building. Below are suggested home safety tips for your clothes dryer.

• Never put synthetic materials such as rubber, plastic, foam, or pieces of cloth that have been used to sponge up flammable liquids in the dryer, even if previously washed.
• Clean the lint out of the exhaust pipe and the rear of the dryer regularly.
• Inspect your lint filter for rips each time you use it. If you see any rips, replace immediately.
• The exhaust pipe should be as short as possible and have limited bends to allow for adequate airflow.

Most home fires happen at night or when people are asleep; emergency lighting or lighting strips can make the difference when you awake, groggy and confused, and need to act quickly in a bad situation. Sprinklers and smoke detectors are a great start to home safety, but emergency lighting can make the difference in helping your family tosafety.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. Udec Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

Udec’s Featured Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: Fluorescent Diffuser Type Area Light
The UDEC Diffuser Type Area Light provides evenly distributed illumination for energy conservation, night/security and emergency lighting.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. Udec Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: The 1942 Cocoanut Grove Fire

The Cocoanut Grove, one of Boston’s most elegant clubs, remains one the deadliest nightclub fires in United States history, killing 492 people and injuring hundreds more.

An underage busboy trying to replace a light bulb on the night of November 28th, lit a match to see what he was doing. Almost instantaneously, someone noticed flames along the satin ceiling. Seconds later, a fireball burst across the central dance floor just as the orchestra was beginning its evening show. Within five minutes, flames had spread to the main clubroom and the entire nightclub was ablaze.

Panic erupted as 1,000 patrons, entertainers and employees fought desperately to gain the exits through sheets of flames, crushing, trampling, and burning as they tried to escape. Several exits were locked, trapping scores of screaming victims, and a plate-glass window that would have provided egress for 200 people was boarded up.

Exits that weren’t locked were quickly jammed with panicked patrons. The main revolving door become so jammed and packed with dead victims who tried to escape, that firefighters had to disassemble the door to get in. It’s been estimated that possibly 300 of those killed could have been saved had the doors swung outward.

The tragedy was over in a matter of minutes as flames and fumes swept through the club. Although most victims died that night, it took 90 hours to identify all the bodies.

An investigation blamed the massive death toll on gross violations of fundamental principles and the club’s owner was eventually found guilty of manslaughter.

The Cocoanut Grove fire prompted major efforts in the field of fire prevention and control for nightclubs and other related places . Immediate steps were taken to provide for emergency lighting and occupant capacity placards in places of assembly. Exit lights werw also required as a result of the concern generated by this fire.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. Udec Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

Udec’s Featured Product: Exit Signs with Emergency Light Combination: Wet Location
The Wet Location LED unit satisfies both exit and emergency lighting requirements and features a durable ABS, corrosion resistant, UV stabilized housing to withstand wet locations or harsh industrial or laboratory conditions.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: The 2001 Tokyo Parlor Fire

A mah-jongg parlor exploded in the early hours on the morning of September 1, killing 44 people in “The Sleepless Castle,” a garish area of all-night gambling and sex shops in downtown Tokyo.

The explosion occurred at about 1 a.m. when an employee of the Ikkyu mah-jongg parlor opened the door of the establishment. Mah-jongg is a popular table game in much of East Asia and sometimes involves gambling.

The explosion happened at an hour when Tokyo’s most famous red-light district is heavily packed with revelers. Witnesses said they heard a loud bang and saw smoke billowing from the building, which houses several other clubs and restaurants.

It was unclear how many people were inside the mah-jongg parlor where the blast occurred on the third floor of the four-story building. Some people fled to the roof where they were plucked off to safety.

Emergency crews quickly cordoned off the area as hundreds of onlookers crowded around. The fire was put out after about five hours. The explosion tore open a hole measuring 6 inches by 5 feet in the side of the building, whose tenants include a casino and an adult club advertised with gaudy red-and-pink signs on the front.

For years, Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district has been the center of the city’s mizu shobai, or sex entertainment industry. The area’s narrow streets are crowded with small bars, restaurants, strip clubs, massage parlors and gambling establishments.

One man who works near the site of the disaster said, “There are many old buildings that aren’t properly maintained, it’s inevitable.”

The fire occurred on Tokyo’s annual disaster preparation day, when the self-defense force, fire department and police performed huge drills aimed at readiness for earthquakes.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most. Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Emergency Light Fixtures: Compact with Remote Capability - Plain Vanilla Choice

UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

Historical Moment: 1996 Rockefeller Center High Rise Fire

A predawn fire broke out one early fall morning at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Several fires broke out in five different remote locations, filling much of the building with smoke. Since the fire had occurred early in the morning, there were few people in the building, fortunately, and everyone was able to evacuate successfully with no loss of life and minimal injuries.

The New York City Fire Department received a telephone report of the fire and dispatched a full first alarm assignment. When the fire fighters arrived, they could see smoke coming from one of the upper floors of the building. However, according to the first arriving command officer, the on-site building security staff was not even aware of any fire condition within the building, nor were there any alarms indicated on the fire alarm system.

Fire fighters who entered the building received reports from civilians of fire on floors 7 through 10. It was later determined that there were fires in five separate electrical rooms. The fire department ultimately transmitted five alarms, bringing approximately 300 fire fighters to the scene.

In spite of the large amount of resources, the fire had become so deeply entrenched in the electrical wiring system in the five separate electrical rooms on several floors that it took fire fighters over four hours to extinguish the fire.

The building had many safety hazards listed against it. Such as, the lack of smoke detection in the areas of the fire, the lack of sprinkler protection in the same area, and the failure of the building fire alarm system to transmit the alarm. In spite of the severity of such fire hazards and due to the timing of the fire, only five civilians and 12 fire fighters were injured.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Integrated Night & Emergency Light Module for Corridor Troffers

The Model 14WEN is a 14-watt fluorescent lamp assembly retrofit. It provides emergency illumination when AC power fails and provides night lighting when corridor lights are switched off.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The 1996 Düsseldorf Airport Terminal Fire

A fire broke on the roof of terminal A at the airport in Düsseldorf, Germany’s third largest airport. 17 people were killed and 62 injured. The fire was caused by insufficient structural fire protection and ongoing welding work during a time where there was no fire watch.

The fire was enhanced by a litany of human and structural safety errors and violations. Smoke detectors were observed in the office areas of the second floor, but not at the ceiling level in the main concourse area. There where no fire walls or traps in the suspending ceiling. The west end was partially equipped with sprinklers, but the fire broke out on the east end that was built earlier and was not equipped with sprinklers.

Escape ways were not readily available at the right places. Eight of the victims were trapped at the Air France desk because of no nearby exits. Ventilation did not automatically stopped and poisonous smoke gases spread uncontrollably across ventilation systems, posing an even greater danger to people than the high temperatures of the fires. Unprotected vertical openings carried the fire upstairs.

The municipal fire brigade was called 27 minutes after fire alarm. The terminal’s alarm system had prerecorded messages, but did not transmit any signals to the local Düsseldorf fire brigade. After the alarm sounded, somebody started the wrong prerecorded warning message, which called people to go right into the burning area.

Elevators were not stopped, or even going to a safe place. Seven victims went by elevator from the parking lot on the roof top directly into the deadly smoke. When the door opened, the dense smoke hindered the light beam so that the elevator doors could not be closed again.

Besides the loss of life and injuries, damage to the airport was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Exit Signs: Self Luminous Exit Signs
How do know if an exit sign is working? You don’t—because no one notices if they are on or out! Udec’s auto-test exit signs automatically test each sign as required by the codes each month and annually.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions with 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The 1971 Ibrox Football Stadium Disaster

THe 1971 Ibrox disaster is listed as one of the blackest days in Scottish football history attended by a crowd of 80,000 football fans. The tragedy resulted in the loss of 66 lives with another 145 other fans injured. Among the dead were 31 teenagers, and four schoolboy pals from the small town of Markinch in Fife, who never returned from the game alive.

The disaster occurred when crush barriers collapsed on the stairway adjacent to passageway 13 as thousands of fans were leaving the Ibrox Park stadium in Glasgow on Jan 2, 1977. The collapse created a smothering chain-reaction pile-up of the crowd. Bodies were found stacked as deep as six feet in the area.

It was at the end of a Rangers versus Celtic game and after 89 minutes of scoreless football, Celtic took a 1-0 lead and many Rangers supporters left the stadium. However, in the last seconds of stoppage time, Colin Stein scored an equalizer for Rangers.

An untrue report circulated for years that fan who were leaving the grounds, came back and met a wave of jubilant fans coming in the opposite direction, but that has been proven untrue. All were heading in the same direction when the crush took place halfway down Stairway 13.

The Ibrox disaster led to a huge redevelopment of Ibrox Park and is a testament to those who died. A plaque and a statue of the Rangers captain at the time of the disaster commemorates the scene where the tragedy occurred.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: Decorative Area Light for Office

UDEC Ultra-Thin office decor area lights are specifically designed to attractively compliment any setting. They can easily be mounted on wall or ceiling for optimum style and lighting.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.

UDEC: LIGHTING THE WAY TO SAFETY
Historical Moment: The 2004 Paraguay Supermarket Fire

The Paraguay supermarket fire on August 1, 2004 was one of the countries worst disasters in decades. Over 400 people died, including numerous children and entire families.

The supermarket, located in a working-class neighborhood, was a three-story Ycuá Bolaños supermarket and commercial complex with offices, a restaurant, and an underground parking garage.

A faulty barbecue chimney in the food court that leaked hot flammable gases into the ceiling, which ignited, is believed to be responsible for the fire. The fire burned for seven hours before firefighters were able to extinguish it. Firefighters found the main doors shut when they arrived.

Later, volunteer firefighters and several survivors of the fire alleged that, when the fire broke out, doors within the complex were deliberately closed and locked, even though there were customers inside, under the direction of the father-son mall owners to prevent looting. The complex also lacked emergency exits as well.

The mall owners and a security guard were eventually found guilty of culpable homicide and were sentenced to seven years in prison in a second trial. The first trial’s ruling - that was later annulled - minimized the crimes committed by the mall owner and enraged the survivors and relatives of the tragedy, causing demonstrations of such magnitude that they became known as the “Tuesdays of Rage”.

It’s impossible to avoid every calamity or accident, but prevention and safety are our top concerns. UDEC Emergency Lighting provides quality lighting when you need it most.

UDEC’s Featured Product: Udec Classic Systems Central Power: Decorative Area Light for Office

The Edge Lit LED Exit Sign is ideal for architectural applications where an aesthetic and low profile appearance are desired to enhance interior spaces. LED’s cast a brilliant red or green illumination on letters embedded inside the acrylic face. LED indicator light and test switch.

Emergency lighting and exit signs are about saving lives. UDEC Corp. offers powerful, safe, unique solutions and 40 years of experience of emergency lighting and exit signs.