Fire Agency: "In Apartment Fires, Assess the Situation First If No Flames or Smoke Enter"

The National Fire Agency announced on the 9th that it has prepared the ‘Improvement Plan for Apartment Fire Evacuation Safety Measures’ to strengthen evacuation safety for residents in the event of an apartment fire. Until now, in case of fire, people were uniformly instructed to evacuate first regardless of the location, but since casualties have occurred during evacuation in apartments, this has been improved.

In the past three years (2019?2021), a total of 8,360 fires occurred in apartments, resulting in 1,040 casualties (98 deaths, 942 injuries), of which 39% were found to have occurred during evacuation. Accordingly, from early April to the end of October this year, the National Fire Agency operated a ‘Task Force (TF) for Improving Apartment Fire Evacuation Safety Measures’ with the participation of 18 related experts for seven months.

First, when a fire occurs in one’s own home, if evacuation through the front door is possible, it is safe to use the stairs in a low posture to evacuate to a safe place such as the ground floor or rooftop, and if evacuation is difficult due to fire at the entrance or other areas, it is safer to move to an evacuation space or a place where lightweight partitions are installed and evacuate there.

In case a fire occurs elsewhere, if flames or smoke do not enter one’s home, it is better to stay inside the unit, monitor the fire situation, and close windows to prevent smoke from entering. However, if flames or smoke enter one’s home, one should act as if the fire occurred in their own home. Although fires rarely spread to other floors in apartments, many deaths from smoke inhalation occur during evacuation. Therefore, when smoke does not enter indoors, it is safer to stay inside, block smoke entry points such as windows, and follow the instructions of the announcement rather than evacuate unconditionally.

Park Seong-yeol, Director of Fire Prevention at the National Fire Agency, said, “Following the improvement of evacuation safety measures to reduce fire casualties, we will do our best to establish more effective fire safety measures.” He also urged, “We ask the public to plan how to evacuate in case of emergency through regular family meetings for evacuation safety.”