【Haichuan Safety Discussion】In the scorching summer, welding sparks at construction sites cause fires once again

Wuhan, June 10 (Xinhua News Agency) (Reporter: Xiong Qi) At around 10 a.m. on the 9th, a fire broke out at the construction site of the Shoudi Urban Terminal project in Jianghan District, Wuhan. Preliminary investigations indicate that the fire was caused by welding work carried out at the site. Welder Qi, who did not possess a professional \"Special Operations Permit\" for welding, caused a fire due to negligence during his work. In accordance with the relevant provisions of the Fire Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, he was sentenced to administrative detention in accordance with the law.

At 17:14 on July 21, 2020, the 119 command center received a report that smoke was coming from a construction site at No. 5 Dongtucheng Road in Chaoyang District. Two fire stations with 10 fire trucks were dispatched to the scene to handle the situation. Upon verification, the fire broke out at the insulation materials site on the roof of Building C1 of the project. The internal construction workers had already extinguished the fire before the fire brigade arrived, and there were no injuries. The fire was caused by welding slag falling and igniting the insulation material during the workers’ welding operations.

The alarm for safe construction remains constant: Two fires in Ningbo caused by improper welding practices Zhejiang Daily, November 16, 2019 · Official account of Zhejiang Daily. Recently, two fire accidents occurred in Ningbo as a result of improper welding techniques or inadequate safety measures. At around 12:45 on November 9, a fire broke out during construction work on the roof of an attached building at a construction site in Dandong Sub-district, Xiangshan County; extruded polystyrene boards, waterproof materials, and other items were destroyed. Fortunately, no one was injured. Investigations on the scene revealed that the main cause of the fire was a female welder named Li, who was welding steel frames on the 17th floor of the high-rise building on the north side. She failed to use proper safety measures, which led to welding slag falling onto the waterproofing and insulation materials being worked on below, thereby triggering the fire.

At 12:55 on November 11, a fire broke out on the roof of the fifth floor of a construction site in Zhonggongmiao Sub-district, Yinzhou District. Thanks to the rapid action taken by the fire department, the flames were quickly extinguished, and no injuries were reported at the scene. Subsequent investigations revealed that the cause of the fire was that welder Ren, who was carrying out steel structure welding work above a cooling scaffold at the construction site, caused sparks from the slag to fall onto the insulation material below. The person in charge of monitoring the fire at the scene also failed to conduct a thorough inspection, and before long, a small fire turned into a major disaster.

According to a report issued by the Dongguan Fire Brigade this morning, on the morning of January 5, 2018, a fire broke out at a construction site in Songshan Lake. Upon receiving the call, the firefighters rushed to the scene immediately, managed to bring the fire under control, and swiftly extinguished it. Upon investigation, the cause of the fire was that Li, a welder working on the construction site’s rooftop cooling tower, caused sparks to fall and ignite the flammable thin plastic layers inside the cooling tower, thereby triggering the fire. Huang, as the person in charge of the construction site, ordered Li to carry out welding work on the cooling tower filled with flammable materials on the rooftop of the Phase IV construction site without obtaining the necessary approval for carrying out such work. This violated fire safety regulations, and he also failed to fulfill his duty to supervise the site, thereby causing others to engage in risky operations that led to the fire. Upon interrogation, the welder Li and the safety officer Huang had no objections to the determination of the cause of the fire, and admitted to their illegal acts.

At 7:50 a.m. on August 4, a fire broke out in a metal roofed structure at a construction site in Yulin High-Tech Zone; thick smoke filled the area, forcing several workers to evacuate to the ground. According to workers on site, the fire started on the second floor of the metal-clad building, likely due to a wire short circuit. “It’s my first day here, and I didn’t expect the place where I’m staying to be burned down too; I don’t know if I’ll be able to go on with this. ”

At around 2:31 p.m. on December 12, 2020, a fire broke out at a construction site next to No. 1, Tujialing Yi Cun, Wuchang District, Wuhan. Upon receiving the report, the 119 command center of Wuhan Fire and Rescue Brigade promptly dispatched 8 fire trucks from the Wuluo Road Fire and Rescue Station to the scene to carry out rescue operations. It is understood that this site is a demolition site with a brick-concrete structure, and the total area to be demolished is approximately 400 square meters. The point of origin of the fire was located to the west of the construction site; it was a single-story brick structure serving as a storefront, which has since been demolished. The length of the site in an east-west direction is about 2 meters, and in a north-south direction it is about 9 meters. There were signs of fire on the foam boards on the west side of the construction site, some communication cables, and the electric vehicles on the north side. On the day of the fire, Yang received a call from his boss, Xiang, who said there was work to be done (demolishing buildings at a construction site) and that everyone should gather around 8 a.m. on the 12th. By the time Yang arrived at the scene, Xiang had already been there. It took them the whole morning to tear down the house. In the afternoon, the two of them saw some scrap metal and planned to cut it up before taking it to sell. There were some debris and foam at the cutting site, all of which are flammable materials. While using an oxygen cutting device to cut scrap metal, Yang accidentally got iron sparks from the cutting process on the foam on the ground, and it suddenly caught fire. There were two buckets of water next to the construction site; two people each carried a bucket to try to put out the fire. But the fire didn’t go out after pouring the water, so they fetched fire extinguishers to continue trying to extinguish it, yet that also didn’t work. In the end, they decided to escape. While trying to put out the fire, some passersby saw that the construction site was on fire and called the emergency services. Firefighters arrived at the scene shortly after, and the open flame was extinguished at around 2:52 p.m. The area affected by the fire was approximately 6 square meters, and there were no casualties. The fire was caused by careless operations during production.