Fire Safety · Warehouses & Industrial
On 20 March 2026, a fire at a car parts manufacturing plant in Daejeon, South Korea killed 14 workers and injured nearly 60 more. Early investigations point to a combination of accumulated flammable material, hazardous substances, combustible construction, blocked escape routes and prior enforcement warnings that went unheeded. Every one of those factors is present in industrial premises across the UK right now.
Industrial premises account for more workplace fires than any other building type in the UK. In 2024–25, industrial buildings were involved in 1,656 workplace fires — nearly a quarter of all workplace fire incidents recorded. Yet industrial fire safety remains one of the most inconsistently managed areas of fire risk, particularly in older manufacturing sites, warehouses and processing facilities where the combination of flammable processes, hazardous materials and ageing building fabric creates exactly the conditions that turned a routine Friday afternoon in Daejeon into a catastrophe.
The Anjeon Industrial fire has been widely covered as a South Korean story. But the factors investigators have identified are not culturally or geographically specific. They are the same issues that appear in UK fire risk assessments every week — and the same issues that the Fire and Rescue Service finds when it audits industrial premises that have been allowed to drift out of compliance.
What Happened in Daejeon
The fire broke out at 1:17pm on Friday 20 March 2026 at the Anjeon Industrial plant in Daejeon's Daedeok district — a three-floor auto parts manufacturing facility with 170 workers inside. It took more than ten hours and over 500 firefighters, police and emergency personnel to bring the fire under control. Fourteen workers died. Most of the bodies were found in a third-floor space used as a gym and locker room — workers who had no viable means of escape once the fire took hold below them.
Early investigation findings, as reported by the Seoul Economic Daily citing the National Fire Agency and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, point to several compounding failures. None of them were unforeseeable. The Daejeon Daedeok Fire Station had notified the factory of violations approximately one month before the fire broke out. The warnings existed. They were not acted upon.
Footage of the Anjeon Industrial plant fire in Daejeon, South Korea, 20 March 2026. 14 workers died and nearly 60 were injured. The fire burned for over ten hours despite a major emergency response. Note: the official cause investigation is ongoing. The factors described in this article reflect early investigative findings as reported by the South Korean National Fire Agency and Ministry of the Interior and Safety.
The Factors That Made It Catastrophic
This was not a fire that was impossible to prevent, or that could not have been survived with better preparation. It was made catastrophic by a series of identifiable, addressable failures — each of which has a direct UK equivalent.
The UK Picture: Industrial Premises Are the Highest Risk Category
Industrial buildings account for approximately 24% of all workplace fires in the UK — more than any other premises type. Factories, warehouses, vehicle repair workshops, storage facilities and manufacturing plants consistently appear at the top of fire incident data, and for understandable reasons: they combine high fire loads, process-related ignition sources, complex electrical systems, flammable and sometimes reactive substances, and building fabric that in many cases predates current fire safety standards.
For warehouse and industrial premises in Chester, the North West and North Wales, the questions the Daejeon fire raises are not abstract. They are operational.
Sandwich Panels: A UK Risk That Is Not Being Taken Seriously Enough
Sandwich panels — composite insulated panels with foam cores — are found throughout the UK's industrial building stock. They are used extensively in cold storage, food processing, warehousing and manufacturing for their thermal properties and ease of installation. Older buildings with polyurethane (PU) or expanded polystyrene (EPS) cores are particularly prevalent in the North West's industrial estates.
The fire risk associated with these panels is severe and well documented. When the foam core is exposed to fire, it ignites rapidly and burns with intense heat, releasing dense toxic smoke containing oily, sooty particulates. Fire spreads within the panel cavity itself — concealed from both detection systems and firefighters. Panels can delaminate suddenly, exposing the burning core directly and dramatically accelerating fire development. As RSA's Risk Control Guide notes, fires in buildings containing combustible sandwich panels often result in total loss — and water, sprinklers and gas extinguishing systems cannot control a fire once it enters the panel core.
If your industrial premises contain sandwich panels with combustible cores, this must be explicitly addressed in your fire risk assessment. Key questions include: what type of core material is present? Are the panels damaged or have any penetrations been made that expose the core? Are electrical systems and heat-generating equipment kept away from the panels? Is there compartmentation to limit fire spread? And critically — do your firefighting and detection arrangements reflect the specific fire behaviour of these panels, rather than those of a conventional building?
Hazardous Substances and the Limits of Standard Suppression
The sodium at Anjeon Industrial was not an unusual substance for that type of facility. It was a routine part of the manufacturing process. What made it dangerous was the combination of its presence with a fire that could not be controlled by conventional means — and the absence of any alternative suppression strategy.
In the UK, DSEAR requires that where dangerous substances are present on premises, the responsible person must assess the risks arising from those substances, implement appropriate controls, and ensure that emergency procedures account for the specific hazards they present. For premises where reactive substances preclude the use of water-based suppression, that assessment must address what alternative measures are in place — and those measures must be real, tested and understood by everyone on site.
This is not just a regulatory obligation. It is the difference between a fire that can be managed and one that cannot.
What UK Industrial Responsible Persons Should Do Now
The Swiss Cheese Problem
No single factor made the Daejeon fire fatal. It was the combination — accumulated fuel load, reactive substances, combustible structure, blocked escapes, unacted warnings — that made it unsurvivable for those caught on the upper floors. Remove any one of those factors and the outcome might have been very different. As we explored in our post on Swiss Cheese Theory and fire safety, this is how catastrophic fires happen — not through a single dramatic failure, but through the alignment of multiple smaller ones that were individually addressable.
A robust, current fire risk assessment is what identifies those holes before they align. It does not prevent every possible incident. But it makes the catastrophic outcome significantly less likely — and it demonstrates that the responsible person has understood the risk and taken proportionate steps to manage it.
We carry out fire risk assessments for warehouses, industrial sites and commercial premises across Chester, the North West and North Wales. If your site has not had a proper assessment recently — or if you have concerns about any of the issues raised in this article — get in touch.
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We carry out thorough, professionally qualified fire risk assessments for industrial premises across Chester, the North West and North Wales — covering process hazards, building fabric, suppression limitations and escape routes.