There have not been many “catastrophic accidents” in the refrigeration industry to study in great detail (PLEASE do NOT translate this into something it is not). But there is one such realitively recent (2008) that occured in Korea and claimed the lives of 40 workers. Although Korea does not have a comparable process safety management standard like OSHA’s or EPA’s, this incident was found to have been caused by lax hotwork practices.
A fire in the basement of a cold storage facility in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, killed 40 of the 57 men working in the warehouse at the time. The remaining workers escaped or were rescued and were treated at a hospital. Seven of the workers were in serious condition, but eventually recovered fully. The 57 people in the building were:
- 34 refrigerant facility technicians
- 17 electricians,
- 3 air conditioner specialists and
- 3 managers
According to police and firefighting authorities, the fire started with an explosion in the basement machinery room of the cold storage warehouse around 10:50 a.m. When the fire broke out, it is believed that 57 workers were installing electric wiring in the machinery room and pumping refrigerant gas for the cold storage facilities.
A firefighter said welders sparked the flame while doing electric welding on cold pipes. This flame seemed to come in contact with the oil vapors floating in the air and ignited the explosion. The vapors must have been created when a 10-cm-thick layer of urethane foam, an insulating material, was attached to inner walls and the ceilings. Workers were injecting urethane foam into the walls of the facility in the basement at the time the fire started.
Construction of the warehouse started in July 2007 and was completed on Nov. 5, 2007. The 29,583 sq. m warehouse with one basement floor and two ground floors was expected to begin business in November. The day of the fire, workers were putting the finishing touches to the facility.