Jeonnam Fire Department Makes Every Effort to Establish Safety Measures to Minimize Apartment Fire Damage

The Jeonnam Fire Headquarters (Chief Hong Young-geun) announced on the 29th that it will promote safety management measures to minimize fire damage in apartments, considering the structural and environmental characteristics of apartments.

To this end, it plans to promote education and publicity, fire safety inspections, joint training, and legal revisions.

First, in January next year, training sessions will be held for apartment managers and related personnel using the apartment evacuation safety manual. This aims to strengthen the initial response and evacuation guidance skills of stakeholders and residents according to the characteristics of apartments.

Additionally, four types of videos on how to use various evacuation facilities in each apartment (lightweight partitions, evacuation spaces, downward evacuation exits, and evacuation devices) and leaflets will be produced and distributed to enhance residents' ability to utilize evacuation facilities independently.

Through joint apartment fire safety inspections with public and private experts, violations of maintenance and management of evacuation and fire prevention facilities such as stoppers and wooden wedges installed on fire doors will be strictly cracked down on.

If fire doors in common corridors are kept open using wooden wedges or similar objects, smoke from the fire can enter the evacuation stairs during a fire, potentially causing casualties during evacuation.

Fire types will be classified based on whether the fire occurred in one's own home (evacuation, rescue request) or elsewhere (standby, evacuation, or rescue request), and fire evacuation behavior guidelines will be promoted accordingly.

Instead of unconditional evacuation, evacuation announcement broadcasts will be improved so that residents can evacuate considering the fire location and evacuation conditions.

Joint firefighting drills will be conducted to respond to apartment fires, and in case of fire, the highest-level firefighting forces, including firefighting helicopters, will be deployed.

Chief Hong Young-geun stated, “We are working to establish a system that allows confirmation of the installation of evacuation facilities when buying or renting apartments,” and added, “We will do our best to ensure apartment safety through effective policy implementation.”

Meanwhile, on the 25th, a fire broke out on the 3rd floor of an apartment in Banghak-dong, Dobong-gu, Seoul, resulting in 2 deaths and 30 injuries.

Jeonnam Governor Kim Young-rok instructed at the policy meeting with department heads the following day to prepare safety measures to minimize casualties in fires in multi-family housing.

Among the 15,562 fires that occurred in the Jeonnam region over the past five years, apartment fires accounted for 478 cases (3%). Of these, only one fire spread to two or more floors.

Analysis of the types of injuries among 43 victims of apartment fires during the same period showed that 38% (16 people) were injured during evacuation, and 16.1% (7 people) were injured during fire suppression.

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