Geo-Young conducts joint fire safety drill with Incheon fire department at logistics center

Geo-Young, South Korea's largest pharmaceutical retail platform company, teamed up with fire authorities Wednesday to conduct a preemptive safety inspection of its major logistics center.

The company announced Friday that it held a joint "fire chief site inspection and local familiarization drill" with the Incheon Gyeyang Fire Station at its Incheon center in Hyosung-dong, Gyeyang-gu, Incheon, on Wednesday.

The inspection was designed to identify vulnerabilities specific to large-scale warehouse facilities — where firefighting and rescue operations are particularly challenging — and to establish an efficient initial response framework in the event of an emergency. More than 20 firefighters, including Gyeyang Fire Station Chief Song Tae-cheol, participated alongside nine fire vehicles, including a command vehicle and pump trucks.

Geo-Young executives and fire officials first held a roundtable discussion on coordination procedures for emergency situations, then conducted an on-site inspection of the center. Particular attention went to smoke ventilation routes, fire vehicle access roads and firefighter activity areas, all assessed in light of the center's high-rack storage structure, in which pharmaceuticals are stacked on tall shelving units.

The subsequent familiarization drill simulated an actual fire, with crews checking vehicle entry and deployment routes and extending an aerial ladder along the building's exterior wall in a center-specific live-action exercise.

The drill marked a proactive public-private effort to secure the safety and continuity of the healthcare supply chain at a key national pharmaceutical distribution hub — one whose disruption in a fire could trigger a large-scale logistics breakdown.

"The pharmaceutical logistics center is a core facility in the essential medicine supply chain, and we maintain rigorous safety management standards," said Park Woong, executive vice president of Geo-Young's logistics division. "We will keep our standing cooperation framework with fire authorities fully operational to ensure there are no gaps in fire prevention."