Factory Fires
Overview
Factory fires are fires occurring in manufacturing, processing, and logistics facilities. Because of large amounts of combustibles and chemicals, complex piping and electrical equipment, and 24-hour operating systems, initial suppression is difficult, and they easily lead to large-scale casualties. In particular, as high-risk processes such as lithium batteries, semiconductors, chemicals, and plastics have increased recently, thermal runaway, toxic gases, and chain explosions have emerged as new risk factors. Factory fires are treated not simply as disasters but as structural problems intertwined with insufficient safety investment, subcontracting and dispatched labor structures, a workforce centered on foreign workers, and regulatory blind spots.
Main Content
1. Causes and Risk Factors
- Electrical factors: Aging wiring, overload, poor contacts, and overheating of distribution panels and transformers account for a substantial portion of all factory fires. The older the industrial complex, the greater the risk of deteriorated electrical equipment.
- Chemicals and dust: Organic solvents, paints, wood dust, and metal dust can form explosive mixtures, and in enclosed spaces even a small ignition source can cause an explosion.
- Lithium batteries: Energy storage systems (ESS) and battery processes for electric vehicles and mobile phones carry thermal runaway risks, requiring suppression strategies different from ordinary fires. Dry chemical extinguishers have limited effectiveness, and large amounts of water are often needed for cooling.
- Process and maintenance work: Hot work such as welding and cutting, equipment modification, and careless handling of combustible materials are cited as major ignition sources.
- Structural vulnerabilities: Sandwich panels, combustible insulation, maze-like storage arrangements, and insufficient emergency exits and sprinklers hinder both evacuation and suppression.
2. Why Casualties Are Large
Factories usually operate two or three shifts, so personnel are dispersed even at night, and noise makes it difficult to recognize fire alarms. In addition, subcontractors, dispatched workers, and foreign workers are often excluded from emergency evacuation drills or have difficulty understanding signs. Indeed, in the 2024 Hwaseong lithium battery factory fire, many foreign workers died, making multilingual safety training and evacuation guidance a social issue.
3. Representative Cases
- June 2024 Hwaseong lithium battery factory fire: A large fire at a primary battery manufacturing plant killed more than 20 people and injured many. Thermal runaway of batteries made suppression take a long time, and the damage to foreign workers and poor safety management were highlighted together.
- 2020 Icheon logistics warehouse fire: A fire that started near an underground cargo elevator and toxic gas caused many deaths, serving as a trigger to strengthen safety standards for logistics facilities.
- 2019 factory and warehouse fires in Jincheon, Pyeongtaek, etc.: They showed a pattern of rapid spread due to sandwich panels and combustible stored materials.
- Recurring small factory fires: At small and medium-sized enterprises lacking personnel and capital, fire facility maintenance and risk assessments are often operated perfunctorily.
4. Prevention and Response
The core of prevention is making risk assessments substantive, replacing aging electrical equipment, managing combustibles, operating a hot work permit system, and introducing explosion-proof equipment in processes handling dust and solvents. On the response side, automatic fire detection systems, sprinklers, emergency lighting, multilingual evacuation guidance, and regular evacuation drills are basic, and it is important to organize in-house fire brigades and self-defense fire brigades for initial suppression and to conduct joint drills with fire stations. For battery processes, priority is given to initial cooling and isolation after fire detection, and respiratory protective equipment is prepared for toxic gases.
5. Legal and Institutional Framework
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, employers have safety measure obligations; under the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, management responsible persons have obligations; and under the Act on Installation and Management of Fire Facilities (effective August 2024), obligations to manage specific fire protection objects apply together. Factory fires expand into criminal liability as well as industrial accident compensation, civil damages, and insurance handling issues.
Latest Trends
The biggest change in 2024–2025 is the reorganization of the lithium battery fire response system. After the Hwaseong Aricell fire, the government and the National Assembly discussed strengthening fire facility standards for battery factories and ESS, expanding hazardous material designations, and reinforcing fire suppression equipment, and local governments began comprehensive inspections of electrical equipment in industrial complexes. In addition, as the amendment to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act expanding its scope to workplaces with fewer than 50 employees was postponed for two years, with implementation scheduled for January 2026, demand for building safety and health management systems at small and medium-sized factories is surging. Furthermore, the trend of strengthening transparency continues, including mandatory multilingual safety training for foreign workers, emergency evacuation drills including subcontract workers, and disclosure of self-inspection results for fire facilities, and the introduction of smart safety technologies such as IoT fire detection, thermal imaging cameras, and autonomous firefighting robots is also spreading.
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