Relentless Air Conditioning Use Pushes Nationwide Fire Risk to Highest Level

[Anchor]

In this kind of extreme heat, it is simply impossible to get by without air conditioners or electric fans. As the use of cooling appliances surges, fires involving outdoor units and power outages are occurring repeatedly.

Reporter Kim Minjun has the details.

[Reporter]

Crimson flames and black smoke soar from an apartment veranda.

At around 7:30 p.m. on August 4, a fire broke out at 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 overheating of the outdoor unit due to prolonged use of the air conditioner.

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

A total of 145 air conditioner fires occurred from July 1 until August 4.

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

Power outages also followed.

At around 7:50 p.m. on August 4, 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 couldn't go inside our homes, especially because we live on the 15th floor. The food inside would melt and spoil, so that was what worried us.]

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

As electricity consumption increases, power outages caused by transformer overloads are becoming more frequent, centered around older apartment complexes.

[Lee Young-joo / Professor, Department of Fire Protection and Disaster Management, 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 open. If the circuit breaker operates normally, the power is cut off only within that household, so it actually does not lead to a larger blackout.]

The National Fire Agency issued the highest level of "Severe" among the three-stage fire risk warnings, urging caution against 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.