The large fire at firelighter factory Fire-Up in Oisterwijk in June of this year was probably caused by overheating. This is according to the investigation that has been done into the fire. The reason that the heat could become a huge fire is probably the automatic extinguishing system: too little foam came out.
There are various reasons for the fact that heating occurred at the firelighter factory, according to the report made by Kappetijn Safety Specialists. Reference is made to the oil mixture that is used, the (too) close stacking of the tablets, the insulating wooden plate material and a lack of cooling.
Light foam system
But the fact that this heating eventually led to a huge fire has to do with the light foam system. This is an automatic fire extinguishing system in which a space must be filled very quickly with synthetic foam in the event of a fire. But in the case of Fire-Up, that didn’t work well. “The installation was able to produce some foam, but not nearly as much foam as needed,” the report says.
In addition, the question is whether the system would have worked well enough at all. According to the research report, it is not clear whether such a high-foam system will work in case of a heating fire. Or that with such a fire it is necessary that the scalding pile is manually pulled apart in order to extinguish the whole thing.
Preventing Expansion
Due to the failing system, the fire brigade could do nothing but burn down the warehouse. And try to prevent the adjacent rooms from also catching fire and the fire from spreading further.
It wasn’t the first time a fire broke out at Fire-Up. There was a lot of unrest among local residents in the area about another fire. However, the municipality had no reason to prohibit Fire-Up from settling in that location on the basis of the zoning plan. Even now, there is no formal reason for this, according to the report.
From the air it was easy to see how devastating the fire was: