Incidence and Mortality Rates of Disasters and Mass Casualty Incidents in Korea: A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Study, 2000-2009

Kim, Soo Jin; Kim, Chu Hyun; Shin, Sang Do; Lee, Seung Chul; Park, Ju Ok; Sung, Joohon

As for technical factors, road crashes were the most common type of disaster and MCI with 2,326 cases (78.6%), followed by fire with 221 cases (7.5%) and others incidents such as isolations of closed space, escalator incident, rippling incident, leisure place incident with 166 cases (5.6%). The number and the frequency of affected and deaths were on the different order for disaster and MCI. For affected victims of disaster only, road crashes were the most common type (2,369 persons, 48.3%), followed by mass gatherings (1,499 persons, 24.9%), fires (991 persons, 16.5%). For dead victims of disaster, fires were most common type (258 persons, 35.9%), followed by road crashes Table 4) . The crude mortality rates for disasters and MCIs nationwide were 2.36 per 100,000 people and 6.78 per 100,000 people, respectively. The crude injury incidence rates per 100,000 people for disasters and MCIs nationwide were 25.47 and 152, respec-tively (Table 5) . For disasters by province, Ulsan showed the highest injury incidence rate (11.15 per 100,000), followed by Jeonnam (7.67) and Gangwon (7.09). For MCIs, the rate for Gangwon was 23.34 per 100,000 people, followed by Jeju (18.5) and Jeonnam (17.4) .