Reservations about the safety of CBNU(Chungbuk National University) facilities
 
  Many accidents have occurred recently. It started with the Mauna resort roof collapse, the Sewol ferry then sank, and soon after the Wangsimni subway line No. 2 trains collided. Big and small accidents are continually occurring. Universities are no exception. A conference in Seoul National University asked university administrations about detailed inspections owing to cracks or leakages in some buildings.
  Most buildings in CBNU were built in the late 1970’s. 44 years have passed since then, and now sagging floors or cracks in the walls can be seen by students. On the 2nd floor in N19, students who take classes in the building feel anxiety when they walk down a corridor. A student(Dept. of Child Welfare)  said, “At first, it looks normal, but actually when I walk, I feel uncomfortable due to the sagging floor. I think that they need to fix it.” As students’ worry, Woo Jong-un in the Department of Facilities Management said, “The 2nd floor’s corridor in N19 is made of wood. As time goes by, it has no choice but to decay. Therefore, we put old concrete under the wood and used beams to support the weight of the concrete. Due to the concrete, there are no problems in the structure’s safety.”
  Also, there are some cracks in the walls. Big and small cracks can be seen in S21-4, E1-2, E8-6 and S14. By a field survey, each college has cracks in the brick walls or fissures in the floors. Cracks near a window on the 3rd floor in S21-4 and cracks in the brick walls on the 3rd floor in E1-2 are representative problems. Woo Jong-un said regarding these dangers, “We grade A to E for measuring damages. D or F grades indicate it is too dangerous to use the facilities, like a large hole in the floor. They need repair or reinforcement before anyone is allowed to enter. We don’t need to do any repairing or reinforcing because the cracks in the wall or fissures in the floor are C grade.” Also, he said, “Now, our university conducts a safety check about facilities and buildings every six months.
  However, we reduced the period of safety checks  to three or four months after the Sewol ferry disaster.”
 


Unseen danger: asbestos
 
  There is an invisible safety problem: asbestos. Asbestos is a dangerous substance that has an incubation period of about 20 to 40 years and leads to lung cancer when asbestos powder is breathed in.
  According to a new law regulating against asbestos introduced in 2014, CBNU entrusts KETRI(Korean Testing and Research Institute for Environment) with the asbestos evaluations of 132 buildings except for the Law School and the Medical Science Library; they were built in 2012. As a result, all 132 buildings were evaluated as having a low risk of asbestos. Each ceiling contains less than 5% asbestos. They received that result because CBNU uses white asbestos(less harmful to humans) rather than blue asbestos (harmful to humans). Besides, as most asbestos is detected in ceilings, each floor is evaluated as safe even though there is still potential danger. In response, a professor in Chungbuk Provincial College indicated, “There is a need to remove the asbestos quickly because the potential damage is possible by artificial factors(maintenance) and natural factors(vibration, air current and leaking).” Therefore, CBNU is going to remove the asbestos from E8-1 and S1-1. The rest of the buildings are going to remove the asbestos starting in 2015. S14, S21-4 and E1-1 are targets in 2015.
 

By Go So-young
sy35@cbnu.ac.kr