At 8:45 p.m., in a charcoal production plant, a technician noticed a fire at the back and middle of the briquette dryer. He sprayed down the fire for 5 minutes and thought that the fire was extinguished. At the 9:00 p.m. shift change, the technician informed his replacement about the incident. After the cogeneration system broke down, the technician left his workstation to inform his supervisor. When he returned to his position at 9:45 p.m., he noticed that more than half of the dryer was on fire. With the fans in operation, the fire gained strength, and the flames spread. The technician began spraying down the dryer with a hose. Alerted by the smell, other employees came to assist. They tried to connect a hose to fire hydrant, but it turned out to be too short. In the panic, it took them 45 minutes to get the fire hose connected and operational. At 11:30 p.m., while they were still trying to put out the fire in the dryer, a fire broke out on a coal container located under a covered slab. Two technicians managed to pull out the container just before the floor under the container gave way, having been consumed by the flames. They sprayed down the remaining burning coal, but they ran out of water at 12:30 a.m. because the firefighting water tank had run dry. At 12:40 a.m., the technicians installed a motor-driven pump on the briquettes’ water supply to finish the extinguishing process. On the dryer side, the technician dismantled the output conveyor so that the stock of briquettes would not catch fire and emptied the container. The fire was extinguished around 2:00 a.m. The fire brigade was alerted at 5 a.m. and came to the site to conduct routine surveillance.

The cause of the charcoal briquette plant fire was not determined. However, keeping the fans running helped fuel the fire. The fire in the coal container may be attributed to non-compliance with guidelines not to keep coal in the container for more than 3 – 4 hours. On the day of the accident, bagging operations were initiated on import containers that had arrived at the same time, instead of on the local coal. The operator had identified several failures resulting from a lack of proper maintenance organisation.

The operator undertook the following operations to prevent such an event from reoccurring:

• information from dryer temperature sensors displayed on the cogeneration system’s monitoring screens with alarm triggering;
• installation of fire sprinkler nozzles above the exchangers to cool them in the event of a fire;
• filling of the firefighting water tank;
• actions to raise the awareness of technicians on the real risks involved and for supervisors to increase vigilance towards the briquette workshop;
• reorganisation of preventive maintenance;
• modification of the location of the fire equipment.