Air Conditioners Blazing Amid Heavy Use... Tropical Nights Lead to Blackouts and Sleepless Nights

[Anchor]

It is weather that is truly impossible to endure without air conditioners or fans. As fires and blackout accidents continue to occur due to the soaring use of cooling appliances, the firefighting authorities have issued the highest level of fire hazard warnings.

Reporter Kim Minjun has the story.

[Reporter]

Crimson flames and black smoke soar from an apartment veranda.

At around 7:30 PM yesterday (August 4), a fire broke out in an air conditioner outdoor unit at an apartment in Bongmu-dong, Daegu, and was extinguished in about 20 minutes.

Fire authorities believe the fire was caused by the outdoor unit overheating from prolonged air conditioner use.

[Resident: There was hardly any wind, but a smoky smell drifted all the way there. I went to the front as well, and it looked like it definitely started right from the outdoor unit side.]

As many as 145 air conditioner fires have occurred from the 1st of last month until yesterday.

Among them, 53 cases were concentrated in the Yeongnam region, including Busan and Daegu, which have recently experienced record-breaking heatwaves.

Blackouts also followed one after another.

At around 7:50 PM yesterday, an apartment complex in Hyoseong-dong, Gyeyang-gu, Incheon, suffered a blackout, leaving about 370 households inconvenienced for nearly 11 hours.

Amid continuing tropical nights, cooling appliances as well as refrigerators stopped working, forcing residents to spend the night wide awake.

[Resident: Since we cannot go inside our homes, and especially because we are on the 15th floor. If things (food) melt and spoil like that inside, that is what worries us.]

In the summer of 2024, cooling demand surged by 29.1% compared to 2020.

As electricity consumption increases, blackouts caused by transformer overloads, centered around older apartments, are also on the rise.

[Lee Young-ju / Professor, Department of Fire Disaster Protection, Kyungsil University: If ventilation is not provided (in the outdoor unit room), the temperature does not drop, so please check whether the ventilation windows of the outdoor unit room are fully opened (and if the circuit breaker) operates normally, power is cut off only within that household, so it actually does not lead to a larger blackout.]

The National Fire Agency issued a "Severe" warning today, the highest of the three levels of fire hazard warnings, and urged caution regarding fires caused by the use of cooling appliances.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Video by Choi Jun-shik | Video Editing by Choi Hye-ran | Design by Kang Yoon-jung)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.