Chemical Safety Institute publishes second nationwide edition covering 92 sites, adding GPS coordinates to boost field accuracy and block secondary pollution

Firefighters battle a blaze at a hazardous materials storage logistics center in Cheongbuk-eup, Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, in August. [Gyeonggi Province Fire and Disaster Headquarters]
Firefighters battle a blaze at a hazardous materials storage logistics center in Cheongbuk-eup, Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, in August. [Gyeonggi Province Fire and Disaster Headquarters]

The Chemical Safety Institute under the Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy said Wednesday it will begin distributing an emergency response guide for hazardous chemical storage and warehousing facilities to disaster response departments in 27 cities, counties and districts nationwide to prevent secondary environmental contamination — including water pollution — caused by firefighting water runoff during warehouse fires.

The guide was developed to stop environmental contamination at the earliest possible stage by intercepting hazardous chemicals and firefighting water before they enter waterways.

Each guide contains six categories of critical field-response information: facility details and the chemicals handled on site, a full site layout, projected volumes of firefighting water generated, the flow paths of firefighting water inside and outside the facility, anticipated routes of waterway entry, and countermeasures for key interception points.

Previously, either no site-specific data existed for blocking waterway contamination, or records were limited to basic facility profiles, chemical inventories and layout diagrams — leaving significant gaps in accident response.

The new guide consolidates facility status, key hazard information and containment routes into a single, at-a-glance reference for first responders, with on-site verification carried out to improve the accuracy of the information.

The Chemical Safety Institute published a pilot edition in April covering 69 logistics facilities in Gyeonggi Province.

That guide was used during the Pyeongtaek logistics warehouse fire in August, supporting on-site response and the pre-installation of containment berms, and demonstrated its effectiveness in blocking waterway contamination.

Incorporating feedback from the field, the institute expanded the guide to cover a total of 92 logistics facilities nationwide.

Instructions on the use of containment equipment and response procedures were supplemented to allow immediate field application. For waterway sections such as agricultural and drainage channels where a street address alone is insufficient to pinpoint a location, latitude and longitude coordinates were added to improve the precision of containment point identification.

"When a fire or other accident occurs at a facility handling hazardous chemicals, a swift and accurate initial response is paramount to preventing secondary environmental damage," said Park Bong-gyun, director of the Chemical Safety Institute. "We will continue to build out practical chemical accident response information that can be used in the field, and strengthen the chemical accident safety net to protect public safety and the environment."


thlee@heraldcorp.com