"A total of 80 firefighters were mobilized....."

When a fire breaks out does your personnel notify the local fire department immediately or do your workers wait to see if they can extinguish the fire themselves? Here is a recent incident that offers another option regarding notifying the local fire department.

A good 80 firefighters and other emergency services moved out when there was a small fire in the die casting plant in Europe one Friday morning in December 2022.

A relatively small fire, triggered by an overdose when filling aluminum, triggered a large-scale operation on Friday at 9.36 a.m. in the die-casting plant of (company name omitted) in the (location omitted). According to Managing Director, (aluminium die cast) employees were able to extinguish the fire themselves, even before the automatically alerted external fire brigades had to intervene.

Head of Operations (local fire department) reported that in addition to his troops, comrades from (six nearby fire departments) responsed as well as the district fire inspectorate, and the police were at the scene. A total of 80 firefighters were mobilized. 

A CO-2 switchgear had also automatically triggered an internal CO-2 switchgear for firefighting. Therefore, the main task for the (fire department personnel) was to vent in a controlled manner.

We are glad no one was injured. We read the news media article that upon a fire breaking out at the die casting plant an automatic notification of the local fire department occurred. Without the workers picking up the phone and calling the local emergency management services. If that was indeed the case, that is great. All too often workers fail to immediately contact the local fire department prior to addressing the situation. That is dangerous because any delay in notifying the fire department may result in the fire growing larger by the time they arrive. It is always recommended to contact the fire department immediately.

What is your workplace policy when a fire breaks out?

Please comment.