2 October, the second day of the holiday: on the plant grounds only the finished-goods warehouse and the raw-material warehouse were still open. Just three people were on duty — one storekeeper and two workers temporarily borrowed from the shop floor to help out.

Before entering the storage area, the storekeeper stopped them at the gate and checked each one — hard hat (CKT-NTB-2) with the chin strap tightened, anti-impact safety shoes (CKF-008) on, an extra pair of cut-resistant gloves (CKS-CUTRE-PU) for anyone handling goods, long-sleeved workwear buttoned all the way up. At the door of the raw-material warehouse, one man reached into his pocket out of habit, then stopped, and pushed the cigarette pack back in.

Last month the neighbouring plant did it another way: someone walked into the warehouse to count stock with a cigarette in his mouth, saying "it's only two minutes". That is wrong. Article 21 of the Fire Protection Law prohibits smoking and the use of open flames in places with fire or explosion hazards; Article 63 sets the penalties — whoever uses open flames in violation of the rules, or smokes or uses open flames in such places, shall be given a warning or fined up to 500 yuan; where the circumstances are serious, detention of up to five days may be imposed.

Why are warehouses especially dangerous over the holidays? Goods are stacked fuller than usual and fewer people are on duty than usual. And ignition sources never check the calendar.

First, a look at the numbers

At its routine press conference this March, the National Fire and Rescue Administration reported: 841,000 fires were reported nationwide in 2025, of which 259,000 — 30.8% — were caused by electrical faults, the highest share of any single cause. The same briefing noted that the number of factory and warehouse fires and the number of deaths in them fell 12.1% and 26.7% respectively year on year. But the electrical line remains the number-one adversary of warehouse fire prevention.

Gap one: treating "open flames strictly prohibited" as nothing more than a sign on the wall

Article 21 of the Fire Protection Law also requires hot work to be approved in advance; electric and gas welders must hold the required certificates on the job.

The Rules for Fire Safety Management of Warehouses, promulgated and put into force in 1990 by Ministry of Public Security Order No. 6 and still in effect today, apply to all kinds of warehouses, storage yards and freight yards. Article 47 is very specific: open flames are strictly prohibited inside warehouses; hot work outside a warehouse requires a hot-work permit approved by the fire safety officer of the warehouse or the organisation. The permit must state the location of the hot work, the time, the hot-work operator, the on-site fire watch, the approver and the fire prevention measures. Article 46 further requires that anyone entering a warehouse area for Class A or Class B goods must register and hand over any ignition sources being carried.

Warehouses storing hazardous chemicals are held to a stricter standard still. Clause 5.2.2 of GB 15603-2022, General rules for the storage of hazardous chemicals in warehouses, provides that smoking and the use of open flames are strictly prohibited within the storage area, and that a hot-work safety management system and an electrical safety management system shall be established. Hazardous-chemical enterprises are also covered by GB 30871-2022, whose clause 5.1.1 states explicitly that "where hot work falls on a public holiday, a rest day, at night or under other special circumstances, it shall be subject to upgraded management".

A real case: on 13 August 2026, the roof canopy of a company warehouse in Qinzhou, Guangxi caught fire, with a burned area of 800 square metres and direct property losses of 22,000 yuan. The cause: the high-temperature arc and molten material from electric welding ignited the transparent corrugated plastic cladding panels. The two welders did not hold special operations certificates and were placed under administrative detention for ten days; the company, having failed to provide fire-fighting facilities and equipment in accordance with the national standards, was fined 13,000 yuan.

Gap two: electricity, the "quietest" ignition source in the warehouse

Article 27 of the Fire Protection Law provides that the installation and use of electrical products, and the design, laying, maintenance and testing of their circuits, must comply with fire protection technical standards and management provisions; the penalty under Article 66 is this — non-compliant cases shall be ordered to be rectified within a time limit, and where rectification is not made in time, use shall be ordered to stop, with a fine of between 1,000 and 5,000 yuan possible in addition.

Chapter V of the Rules for Fire Safety Management of Warehouses is devoted to electricity: Article 39 — no portable lighting fixtures may be set up inside warehouses, and the horizontal distance between the point directly beneath a luminaire and the stored goods shall not be less than 0.5 metres; Article 40 — distribution circuits must be protected by metal conduit or non-combustible rigid plastic conduit; Article 41 — each warehouse shall have a separate switch box installed outside it, and storekeepers must cut off the power at the breaker when leaving the warehouse; Article 43 — no goods may be stacked around electrical equipment or beneath overhead lines.

Clause 8.2.1 of GB 15603-2022 requires daily checks inside and outside the warehouse, and one of the items is "whether the power breakers are properly switched off"; clause 6.2.5 singles out the lamp clearance — the distance between stacks and lighting fixtures shall be no less than 50 centimetres.

The three most common electrical "makeshifts" in warehouses are ones almost everyone has seen: power strips daisy-chained one after another, cables coiled up and hung off the edge of shelving, and the electric forklift charging area right next to a stack of cardboard cartons. On the ledger they all read "normal".

Gap three: the spontaneous-ignition sources "just set down for a moment"

This one is the least conspicuous, yet it is often the ignition point. Article 23 of the Rules for Fire Safety Management of Warehouses states: used oily cotton waste, oily gloves and other oil-soaked fibre articles, as well as combustible packaging, shall be stored in a safe place and dealt with regularly. A pile of oily cotton waste left in a corner heats itself up until it finally ignites itself — it needs no external ignition source at all.

Mixed storage is another landmine. Article 19 provides: Class A and Class B goods and general goods, as well as goods liable to react chemically with each other or requiring different extinguishing methods, must be stored in separate rooms or separate warehouses, with their names, properties and extinguishing methods marked in a conspicuous place. Clause 5.9 of GB 15603-2022 gives the list of goods that must be stored separately: highly toxic chemicals, flammable gases, oxidising gases, substances and mixtures that emit flammable gases on contact with water, chlorates, hydrogen peroxide, and the like.

The three easiest traps to fall into

Trap one: approving the hot-work permit verbally. What Article 47 requires is a written document stating six items; with no fire watch posted on site, no one has the authority to call a stop.

Trap two: turning off the lights at the end of the shift but not pulling the breaker. Article 41 makes "storekeepers must cut off the power at the breaker when leaving the warehouse" a hard requirement.

Trap three: treating the aisles and the space in front of fire extinguishers as "temporary storage slots". The clearances are not left there for inspections to see — they are left for the path of smoke and for the people who come to rescue.

A few things a company can do right now

One: every hot-work job in the storage area gets a permit first — all six items filled in, and run under upgraded management during the holiday.

Two: draw up a "leaving-site checklist" — lights off, breakers off, doors and windows closed, checked and signed warehouse by warehouse.

Three: take a tape measure to the clearances once — main aisles 2 metres, stack-to-stack spacing 1 metre, stack to wall 0.5 metres, stack to beams and columns 0.3 metres, and 0.5 metres beneath lighting fixtures. The 1990 rules and the current national standard agree on these figures; after measuring, mark lines on the floor — that works better than putting up slogans.

Four: put the ignition-source box at the storage-area gate back into use: register on entry, hand over lighters. For warehouses holding flammable gases, flammable liquids, flammable solids and explosives, clause 5.3.1 of GB 15603-2022 requires anti-static workwear, prohibits shoes with metal nails, and requires body static to be eliminated before entry — but do not fix on this clause alone: hard hats, anti-impact safety shoes and cut-resistant gloves are every bit as indispensable.

There is nothing new about warehouse fire prevention; the hard part is doing it in earnest every single day. Before this holiday, who signed off on your plant's last warehouse inspection? Tell us in the comments.

This article is compiled on the basis of the current laws, regulations and national standards; the original texts of the standards and the rules of your own organisation shall prevail.