How to Combat Industrial Fires?

Tackling Industrial Fire: How? Falckon offers integrated solutions encompassing "fire-fighting service", "fire training" and "fire risk elimination activities" for industrial facilities classified as hazardous and highly hazardous. Serving Turkish industry, Falckon minimises production loss, customer loss and reputation loss for companies through rational and technological measures it has developed. Falckon adds value to companies by contributing to their operations in the industrial fire-fighting sector. Closing the previous year with substantial growth, the company participated in numerous projects and provided employment opportunities for many fire-fighting professionals. Falckon has expanded its network beyond Turkey by providing training for thousands of national and international company employees. Operating with a total of 250 fire-fighting personnel, Falckon delivers fire safety services by providing facility and production centre-specific solutions for the precautions that must be taken against fire.

Damage Costs Measured in Millions of Dollars

Pointing out that damage costs from fires at industrial facilities are measured in millions of dollars, Falckon General Manager Anıl Yamaner stated: ''Loss of life is an entirely different dimension. Even if you don't lose the factory, when a single production line becomes unable to operate for 1-2 days, we're talking not just about million-dollar losses, but crises that will have major and long-lasting impacts on companies such as production loss, inability to meet customer orders, and reputation damage.''

Intervention Errors in Fire Growth

Noting that Falckon conducts incident site inspections and fire root cause analysis for every minor incident at the facilities it serves, Yamaner continued: ''The apparent causes are often hot work, ignition of evaporating flammables by electricity, self-ignition of heated oils and hydrocarbons, careless work, and even external factors such as lightning strikes or vehicle accidents. When you dig down to the root cause of incidents, it often turns out that the primary culprit is lack of procedures or failure to properly apply existing procedures. While it is not always possible to prevent some fires by taking precautions alone, their growth usually occurs due to intervention errors.''

''With Our FFC QR Code Application, We Can Inspect Equipment in a Very Short Period''

Stating that as a company they place great importance on R&D investments, Yamaner said: ''With our QR code application 'Falckon Fire Commander (FFC)' that we developed with our own engineers, we can easily see whether systems we monitor for maintenance and are confident in work correctly in case of a real incident, and whether they are operational or not. With the FFC QR code application, we can inspect equipment in a very short time. When we scan the QR code, we can see when the equipment was last filled, and when its next use date will be. We can detect any deficiencies in the equipment, or understand if it is non-operational. We can then easily arrange its maintenance for the next period. There is no precedent for this application anywhere in the world and it continues to be developed with new benefits being added.''

Business Continuity Must Be the Primary Focus

Adding that fire-fighting is a matter of 'systems', Anıl Yamaner stated: ''This system should not merely serve the purpose of showing documents during inspections. Employee safety and facility business continuity must be the primary focus. The negative impacts of any fire on any operation cannot be ignored. Current regulations do not mandate facilities to maintain professional fire-fighting teams. Changing this from an optional 'it would be good if done' to a mandatory 'it must be done' status is quite necessary for the continuation of production and the survival of industry.''