[News Terms] 'Fire Emergency Response Levels' Seen Through the Hankook Tire Fire

The 'Fire Emergency Response Levels' are emergency response stages issued by fire stations or fire headquarters in the event of fires or national disasters, consisting of a total of three levels.

Response Level 1 is issued for routine incidents and can be declared by the on-site commander's authority when the fire can be handled with the personnel and equipment of the fire station in charge. Firefighters, fire trucks, and four teams of 119 rescue squads from the jurisdictional fire station are deployed. This typically applies to cases with fewer than 10 casualties and situations that take about 3 to 8 hours to resolve.

On the morning of the 13th, smoke from a fire at the Hankook Tire factory in Moksang-dong, Daedeok-gu, Daejeon, is rising into the air. Firefighting helicopters are continuously spraying water as they carry out extinguishing operations.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Response Level 2 is issued by the chief of the jurisdictional fire station when it is judged that Response Level 1 is insufficient. In addition to the personnel and equipment of the jurisdictional fire station, personnel and equipment from 2 to 5 nearby fire stations are deployed. The fire station control team is activated, and the on-site command team that managed Level 1 is expanded into an emergency rescue control team. This includes large fires occurring in public institutions, high-rise buildings, department stores, and other multi-use facilities, as well as special fires at aircraft, railroads, power plants, and similar locations.

Response Level 3 is issued by the command headquarters chief when it is judged that Response Level 2 is also insufficient. In this case, the fire headquarters chief takes overall command of the situation and reports directly to the head of the relevant local government. All personnel and equipment of the fire stations under the local fire headquarters are fully mobilized, and if insufficient, fire forces from neighboring local governments can also be deployed. When Level 3 is issued, there is a high possibility of declaring a special disaster area. Recently, many cases of large wildfires have triggered Response Level 3. It is issued when the expected wildfire damage area exceeds 100 hectares and the expected extinguishing time is over 24 hours.

Firefighting helicopters are extinguishing a wildfire that broke out in the hills around Wolpyeong-ri, Hapcheon-gun, Gyeongnam Province, on the afternoon of the 8th.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

A fire that occurred at the Hankook Tire factory in Daedeok-gu, Daejeon at 10:09 p.m. on the 12th led the fire authorities on site to issue Response Level 1 at 10:17 p.m., and then raised it to Level 2 at 10:34 p.m. Despite this, as extinguishing became difficult, it was further raised to Response Level 3 at 2:10 a.m. the next day, the 13th. A total of 103 firefighting equipment and 431 firefighters were deployed on site, and support was received from Ulsan Metropolitan City, including large-capacity water cannon vehicles.

Representative incidents where Response Level 3 was issued include the large wildfires in Gangwon-do Goseong-Sokcho in 2020, the wildfires in Gangneung-Donghae in March last year, the Itaewon tragedy in Seoul in October of the same year, and the wildfire in Hapcheon, Gyeongnam, which occurred on the 8th, destroying over 163 hectares of forest and mobilizing 152 pieces of equipment and 33 firefighting helicopters.