"Measuring Safety Awareness Levels of Firefighters" ... Development of Diagnostic Questionnaire by the End of October

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] The National Fire Agency announced on the 14th that it will measure the safety awareness level of firefighters to prevent safety accidents occurring during firefighting activities.

According to the National Fire Agency, from 2010 to last year, over a 10-year period, 55 firefighters died in the line of duty due to hazardous tasks, and 4,542 were injured, averaging about 500 firefighters suffering safety accidents annually. Due to this, it has been pointed out that ensuring the safety of firefighters who are frequently engaged in field activities requires not only addressing direct factors but also improving latent factors related to safety awareness.

The National Fire Agency established a new clause regarding the enhancement of safety awareness in the "Regulations on Safety Management of Firefighting Activities at the Scene for Firefighters," enacted in January this year, and is promoting policies to strengthen the prevention of safety accidents. They are also conducting research in cooperation with the Catholic University Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation (Professor Park Young-seok), a specialized institution related to safety awareness measurement.

To begin with, the National Fire Agency plans to develop a questionnaire as a diagnostic tool based on indicators that can assess the level of safety culture, divided into organizational and individual parts, including safety culture, safety propensity, safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety behavior, and safety performance.

Once the questionnaire is developed, the agency plans to measure the first safety awareness level at the end of this month targeting firefighters nationwide, analyze the measurement results by December, improve the questionnaire, and then conduct a second safety awareness level measurement in the first half of next year.

Im Won-seop, Director of Fire Policy at the National Fire Agency, said, "We plan to develop an analysis program along with regular measurements in the future to ensure that the improvement of firefighters' safety awareness can lead to actual accident prevention."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.