SINGAPORE – Yesterday’s fire at ECO Special Waste Management at 23 Tuas View Circuit was the largest industrial fire this year.
Workplace safety consultant Lee Wee Kiat said asbestos, which the company handles, is highly toxic and carcinogenic in the long term.
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Mr Lee said: “If it was burnt in the fire, it would create a dangerous atmospheric hazard for the people around it.”
There were 159 industrial fires last year, according to the latest Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) Fire Incident Statistics Report. That represents 31.4 per cent of the total fires in non-residential premises. There were 158 industrial fires in 2015.
JURONG ISLAND FIRE
One of the biggest fires last year was at a petrochemical facility on Jurong Island when an oil tank caught fire in April.
There were no casualties but the fire raged on for five hours before it was put out by 150 SCDF personnel.
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In Oct 2015, Leeden National Oxygen chemist Krysten Lim Siaw Chian, 30, died in a blaze at the gas manufacturing firm in Tanjong Kling Road in Jurong.
This article by The Straits Times was published in The New Paper, a free newspaper published by Singapore Press Holdings.
