Smoke and flames are seen at a 33-story apartment building in South Korea’s southern city of Ulsan on Oct. 9, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Sept. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — An experiment proved that the installation of fireproof screens in balconies can contribute to preventing the spread of fire at apartment buildings.
The Korean Fire Protection Association, a statutory not-for-profit fire protection organization funded by Korean non-life insurance companies, conducted an experiment simulating a fire on the first floor.
The experiment showed that when a fireproof screen was installed in the balcony, the fire didn’t spread from the affected area until more than 10 minutes after the fire started.
After receiving a signal from a fire detector, fireproof screens installed on the first and second floor simultaneously enclosed the balconies just 12 seconds after the fire started.
With no fireproof screen installed and under similar conditions, the first-floor balcony window broke after one minute and 30 seconds, and flames leaked through the window three minutes after the fire started.
Three minutes and 30 seconds after the fire started, the balcony window on the second floor broke, with the fire spreading to the inside of the second floor.
If a fire starts in an apartment higher than the 20th floor, a height that cannot be reached by a high ladder vehicle, and flames spread into upper floors through balcony windows, it becomes very difficult to extinguish the fire.
According to statistics from the National Fire Agency, there were 2,808 fires at apartment buildings last year, resulting in 364 casualties and more than 10 billion won (US$8.49 million) in property damage.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
