Minister Park Jong-ho of Korea Forest Service (KFS) inspects efforts to combat a wildfire in Goseong, Gangwon-do, on May 2. (Photo: KFS)

Korea Forest Service (KFS), learning the lessons of a disaster-level wildfire on the East Coast in April 2019, has established a new 2020 comprehensive wildfire countermeasure plan and come up with upgraded steps based on analyses on this year’s wildfires in Andong and Goseong.

KFS Minister Park Jong-ho gave a briefing on the master plan and upgraded steps at the government complex in Daejeon on May 12 and revealed better preparedness to brace for large-sized wildfires from now on by sharing information with fire-related ministries and local automotive authorities in charge of on-site command.

The new 2020 comprehensive wildfire countermeasure plan is a precision countermeasure step based on on-site application and science and technology.

The plan has paid off: Managing to combat springtime wildfires – wildfires that occurred in Andong on April 24 and Goseong on May 1.

The Andong wildfire, a kind of a large-sized one, which took place at the urban area of a city with a high population density, could be in a danger of expanding into a disaster-level one due to high winds, but it had made a feat of minimizing human and property damages.

As for the latest Goseong wildfire, it took a resemblance with the 2019 Goseong/Sokcho wildfire in terms of location, occurrence timing (before and after 8 p.m. and wind speed of more than 20 meters per second and extinguishing time of 12 hours, but it differed: No human loss, and property damages having minimized.

The latest Goseong wildfire case had more favorable fire-fighting conditions such as lower wind speed, higher humidity, and broad-leaved forests, compared to the 2019 wildfires that occurred multi-pronged in Gangwon-do.

The keys for managing to combat the latest Andong and Goseong wildfires, picked by KFS, follow: Reinforced inter-ministry, proactive cooperation, establishing a science and technology-based smart regime to prevent and combat wildfires, inaugurating a regime aerial and on-land fire-fighting strategies, making on-land fire-fighting manpower mobilization and dispatching efficient, efficiently coping with smouldering fires, Airborne fire-fighting, wildfire specialized fire-fighting teams’ ground combating crews’ remarkable performances, and converting fire-fighters into state-salaried officials and wildfire specialized squad members into regular employees.

Future Improvement Steps and Countermeasures

KFS will carry out smart responses against wildfires by ramping up expertise through nurturing of wildfire response manpower and employing new technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution while strengthening wildfire surveillance and the determining of causes of wildfires.

In a first step of these, as the nation finds it difficult to mobilize people in the agricultural and mountainous areas due to their aging, wildfire specialized squads and airborne firefighting squads will be manned with top elite agents armed with new technologies and equipment.

Initially, 160 out of a 435-member wildfire specialized fire-fighting squad will be made regular ones this year, and the remainder will be converted on a gradual basis.

Wildfire specialized squads and airborne firefighting squads will be armed and nurtured with drone driving licenses and capabilities to use new technologies such as fire-fighting shots and agents so that they can play like U.S. fire-fighting hotshots.

As parts of smart wildfire response steps, KFS will build tightly-knit wildfire prevention system without blind areas using intelligent CCTVs and drones to prevent wildfires.

As for fire-fighting, KFS will develop robots, fire-fighting shots and agents as well specialized fire-fighting vehicles that will be made available in narrow roads. It will aggressively explore and implement R&D related to wildfire responses with the private sector to become a global wildfire response power.

Ambush-duty agents will be sent to arrest those who case wildfires in cooperation with police, and an inter-ministry investigation team will be operated to determine their causes. The cause of the latest Goseong wildfire is presumed to be the overheating of a house boiler.

Taking its cue in the case, KFS is considering reinforcing regulations on the chimneys of a wood boiler through consultation with related ministries.

In the briefing session, KFS Minster Park extended thanks to neighborhood residents for taking shelter quickly and giving a hand in fire-fighting by spreading agricultural chemicals.

“It is no exaggeration to say that whether responses against disasters like wildfires are successful or not depends on close collaboration among neighborhood residents and related organizations.”

Minister Park said, “We at KFS will respond in a thorough and swift fashion by ramping up cooperation with related organizations and employing fire-fight expertise we have accumulated for the past 60 years and technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution.”