Seminar on Fire Site Empty City Plan: Investigation of the August 11th Fire at Chongqing Banan Shangfeng Logistics Distribution Center

Prof Li Kaiyuan

Dean, School of Safety Science and Emergency Management

Wuhan University of Technology, China

This seminar will be chaired by A/P Wan Man Pun.

This study examines the August 11th fire at the Shangfeng Logistics Distribution Center in Chongqing’s Banan District, where a flashover occurred three hours after the initial fire was extinguished. The incident resulted in two fatalities, including one firefighter, highlighting the risks of secondary explosions in post-fire environments. The fire originated in one storage compartment and was successfully extinguished. However, residual heat, accumulated flammable gases, and inadequate ventilation in a neighboring compartment created conditions for a delayed explosion. Using Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) software, we reconstructed the fire dynamics to identify the causes of the flashover. The simulation showed that smoldering materials and heat conduction raised temperatures in the adjacent compartment, where flammable gases accumulated due to poor ventilation. The reintroduction of oxygen during post-fire operations triggered the explosion. This analysis underscores the need for thorough inspections of fire-damaged areas, improved ventilation strategies, and enhanced training for firefighters to identify potential post-fire hazards. It also highlights the importance of stricter fire prevention measures, including better storage practices and compartmentalization in logistics facilities. Our findings provide critical insights into fire dynamics and offer practical recommendations to reduce risks and improve safety in large-scale logistics centers.

Prof. Kaiyuan Li is the Dean of the School of Safety Science and Emergency Management at Wuhan University of Technology. He has long been engaged in foundational research, experimentation, and numerical simulation in fire prevention and control. His team’s innovative “K-K” method and “Virtual Thermal Flow Field” technology have been successfully applied to numerical reconstructions of real fire incidents, including the catastrophic “11·21” fire in Anyang, Henan, China. Some of these advancements have been incorporated into the source code of the globally leading FDS software. As a recommender, Prof. Li joined the global FDS development team in 2015, specializing in pyrolysis module development. In 2022, he received the Editor-in-Chief’s Featured Article Award from Fire Safety Journal twice. He is an invited editorial board member of the SCI-indexed journal Fire Technology, co-chair of the fire subforum at the International Combustion Symposium, and a lead organizer for the fire-focused sessions at the Academic Annual Meeting of the Chinese Society of Engineering Thermophysics. Additionally, he serves as an expert on the technical team of the State Council's special investigation group for major fire incidents. Over the past five years, Professor Li has published 40 SCI-indexed papers in leading journals such as Combustion and Flame (top-tier in combustion research) and ACS Energy Letters (top-tier in energy research). He has led 21 research projects with total funding exceeding 10 million RMB, received seven scientific research awards, and delivered eight keynote or invited talks at international and national conferences.