Today come across this news from Sarawak Tribune titled: 'Owner loses RM5 million after factory destroyed by fire'. The news mentioned the fire start at 2.20pm. when the owner heard his worker shouting that the factory caught fire. The owner try to put out the fire using a fire extinguisher but to no avail. The fire spread to the rest of the premise.

                                                                             photo taken from Sarawak tribune.

Beside the owner with his fire extinguisher, where are the rest of the workers? Running for cover or there is only one fire extinguisher available at that time. The number of fire extinguisher and their location in the factory need to be plan and maintained properly. The worker has to be trained on how to correctly use a fire extinguisher. For a factory like this, it should has it own ERT, emergency response team especially a fire fighting team. The members selected from different section of the factory. It doesn't cost much to train your worker on fire fighting as compare to install smoke detector and fire sprinkler system.

It might cost the owner to spend 1-2K a year to maintain the system. A few hundred to train his worker. But running the factory for 13 years without incident = priceless. In this case = RM5 million.

Conclusion: IF YOU THING SAFETY IS EXPENSIVE TO MAINTAIN, TRY AN ACCIDENT.