Pohang Steel Works 8 fires in 2 years
3Finex factory explosion sound in the morning
Difficult to access at 50m height
Evolution in 5 hours… 1 minor injury
Following 2023, January, February, and April of 2024 will also be canceled.
POSCO’s safety management is on the chopping block
In the early morning of the 10th, a large fire broke out with a strong explosion sound at the POSCO Pohang Steel Works in Nam-gu, Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do. The fire was extinguished in about five hours, but citizens’ anxiety is increasing as fires have occurred one after another at the Pohang Steel Works since last year. POSCO’s safety management awareness was put on the chopping block.
Smoke is rising into the sky from a large-scale fire that broke out at POSCO Pohang Steel Works in Jecheol-dong, Nam-gu, Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do at around 4:20 a.m. on the 10th. It was found that the fire started with an explosion at the tower of the 3rd Finex Plant at Pohang Steel Works. As a result of this fire, one employee suffered second-degree burns on his face and hands and was transported to a nearby hospital. Pohang = Yonhap News
According to the Gyeongbuk Fire Department, Pohang Southern Fire Department, and Pohang Southern Police Station, an explosion and fire broke out at the 3rd Finex Plant Tower of POSCO Pohang Steel Works at 4:22 a.m. on this day. Citizens who witnessed this reported that there were three explosions loud enough to shake the building across the Hyeongsan River. One Haedo-dong resident said, “I was sleeping when I woke up to a sound that sounded like something was ringing, and when I looked outside, I saw something that looked like flames.” He said, “I thought there was a war when I heard the ‘bang bang’ sound,” and shook his head in shock.
The FINEX factory where the fire occurred is a facility that produces molten iron like a blast furnace by directly using iron ore and bituminous coal, omitting the process of preprocessing raw materials, and is as large in scale as other blast furnace facilities in a steel mill. 3Finex is a 22-story apartment building, and the point of ignition is believed to be in one area on the 3rd floor. The fire department explained that there were 48 tunnels in total.
After receiving a fire report, the fire department issued the first response level at around 4:50 a.m. and deployed 43 fire trucks and 120 personnel to extinguish the fire. POSCO’s own fire department was also deployed from the beginning of the fire. The 3Finex factory was about 50 meters high and the fire was so intense that fire departments initially had difficulty accessing it. Firefighters extinguished the flames by spraying a large amount of water and successfully extinguished the fire at 6:37 a.m. Afterwards, it was completed around 9:20. Among the eight POSCO workers inside the factory due to this fire, Employee A (36) suffered second-degree burns on his face and hands and was transported to a nearby hospital, while the remaining seven were evacuated.
Fires have been frequent at the Pohang Steel Works for the past two years. On January 26th of this year, a fire broke out in a communication line in the Seongang area within the Pohang Steel Works and was extinguished in about 10 minutes. Less than a month later, on February 15th, a fire broke out in a coal transportation facility, and on the 29th of the same month, a fire broke out in a conveyor belt for transporting raw materials. On April 18 of this year, a fire broke out at POSCO’s COG (coke oven gas) booster facility.
On December 21st of last year, a fire broke out in a conveyor belt transporting iron ore from a silo, which is a raw material storage, and on April 27th of the same year, a fire broke out in a conveyor belt transporting raw materials near the 3Finex plant. On December 23 last year, a fire broke out in the power lines around the 2nd blast furnace (blast furnace), causing a power outage, and the operation of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th blast furnaces was halted for a while.
When facility operations were temporarily suspended, POSCO carried out so-called ‘defense work’ by automatically burning the gas and sending it out to prepare for the risk of explosion due to the increased concentration of by-product gas generated as a by-product in the product production process. During this process, the area surrounding the factory was covered with black smoke and flames erupted from the chimney, leading to a flood of citizen reports.
The fire that broke out at POSCO Pohang Steel Works in Jecheol-dong, Nam-gu, Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do at around 4:20 am on the 10th was extinguished at around 9:20 am, 5 hours later, and the Coast Guard is inspecting the sea around POSCO. Yonhap News
Police are investigating the cause of the fire. Pohang Southern Police Station announced that it had preserved the accident site and requested an analysis from the National Institute of Forensic Science to investigate the cause of the fire. The National Forensic Service plans to conduct an identification at the fire site as early as the 11th. The police and fire authorities plan to investigate equipment abnormalities, worker negligence, and damage details based on the identification results.
Pohang Southern Fire Department Chief Ryu Deuk-gon advised, “There is an urgent need to invest budget to upgrade old facilities, and fires can be prevented by eliminating dumping contracts by introducing limited minimum prices like government offices rather than low-price bidding.”
Pohang = Reporter Lee Young-gyun lyg0203@segye.com
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