While traveling a few days ago, I came across news of a fire that broke out in storage facilities at an aluminum fluoride plant located in Aqaba's Southern Industrial Zone.
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The initial reports were reassuring: Civil Defense teams, police, and other relevant authorities responded swiftly, bringing the blaze under control before carrying out cooling operations and gradually restoring normal activities.
The Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) credited the successful response to effective coordination and the activation of a comprehensive emergency plan involving all concerned agencies.
However, the incident deserves to be viewed through a broader lens than simply celebrating the successful firefighting operation or awaiting the findings of the official investigation.
More pressing questions should be asked: Why do we rely so heavily on emergency preparedness while overlooking the root causes?
What if the response had been delayed by only a few more minutes due to more challenging circumstances? Would the area have experienced only an industrial fire, or could it have escalated into a disaster with far-reaching consequences?
These are legitimate questions, particularly given the recurrence of industrial incidents in the area.
The answers begin with the nature of the facility itself. This was not an ordinary industrial site but a chemical manufacturing plant producing aluminum fluoride, a process that relies on fluorine compounds.
Among the most hazardous substances associated with such facilities is hydrogen fluoride (HF), a highly toxic and corrosive chemical capable of causing severe respiratory, skin, and eye injuries if released in significant quantities.
It is important to emphasize that there is no official information indicating that hydrogen fluoride was released during this particular fire, and no such conclusion should be drawn before the technical investigation is completed.
If such findings exist, they should be made public.
Even so, the mere presence of hazardous materials at any industrial facility requires the highest level of preparedness.
Risk management is not only about responding to what happened it is about preparing for what could have happened.
This incident also highlights the importance of establishing the specialized Civil Defense center in Aqaba's Southern Industrial Zone. Having personally followed and supported its establishment during my time in public office, including advocating for official backing from the Minister of Interior and the President of ASEZA, I believe this fire demonstrated that investing in preparedness, specialized training, and dedicated emergency infrastructure is far from an administrative luxury, It is a fundamental safeguard for lives, industrial assets, and the national economy.
The professionalism displayed by Civil Defense teams may not only have limited material losses but may also have prevented the fire from spreading to neighboring facilities that store hazardous chemicals.
Yet the broader issue extends beyond this single incident.
Aqaba's Southern Industrial Zone hosts numerous facilities handling dangerous substances. Some store large quantities of ammonia, while others process acids and various industrial chemicals.
Individual companies may comply with safety regulations, but the central question is no longer about each facility in isolation. It is about the cumulative risks created by concentrating hazardous industries within the same geographical area.
Industrial safety experts refer to this as the "domino effect," where an accident at one facility can trigger a chain reaction affecting neighboring plants if separation distances are insufficient or hazardous material inventories are too concentrated.
For this reason, industrialized countries assess not only the safety of individual projects but also the cumulative risk posed by all facilities operating within a single industrial zone.
This raises legitimate public questions. When proposals are submitted to expand industrial operations in the Southern Industrial Zone or to construct additional ammonia storage tanks or other hazardous-material facilities, as is currently being considered are approvals based solely on each project's technical compliance? Or are independent, up-to-date assessments conducted to evaluate the cumulative risks now facing the entire area?
If authorities insist that such assessments are indeed conducted and conclude that everything remains safe, then another question naturally follows: What exactly is the basis for that confidence? Who reaches those conclusions? And can the existing infrastructure and emergency response systems still keep pace with the continuous expansion of hazardous industrial activity?
This is not an argument against investment.
Aqaba remains Jordan's economic gateway, and industrial development is a national necessity. Rather, it is a call to ensure that economic growth remains balanced with public safety, and that success is measured not only by the number of new projects approved but also by the region's capacity to accommodate them safely particularly when one company experiences repeated incidents that cast a shadow over an otherwise competent industrial community.
Perhaps the greatest mistake after every accident is limiting our response to an investigation or imposing penalties that resemble little more than a schoolteacher reprimanding a student for failing to submit homework, before waiting for the next incident to occur.
Faith in destiny does not absolve individuals, companies, or authorities of responsibility for preventing disasters. Humans determine where factories are built. Humans approve expansions. Humans decide where hazardous storage tanks are located.
Humans establish safety regulations, Humans address or overlook violations. And humans possess reports identifying serious risks associated with aging infrastructure.
Reducing those risks is therefore a national responsibility.
The aluminum fluoride plant fire demonstrated that Jordan possesses highly professional emergency response teams capable of managing industrial incidents efficiently, and that deserves recognition.
At the same time, it also reminds us that the sources of risk remain in place.
True success should not be measured solely by how quickly a fire is extinguished, but by our willingness to ask difficult questions before the next fire occurs.
Has the concentration of hazardous industries in Aqaba's Southern Industrial Zone reached a point where a comprehensive reassessment is now necessary?
Will more potential sources of danger continue to be added, or has the time come to reconsider the philosophy governing industrial expansion, so that what is later described as "fate" does not become the foreseeable consequence of human decisions that could have been reviewed before it was too late?
To be candid, my original title compared the widespread public and media attention given to a shawarma spit fire at a local restaurant with the relatively limited attention paid to a fire at one of the country's most hazardous industrial sites.
Were it not for God's grace and the professionalism of the specialized Civil Defense teams, the consequences could have extended far beyond a single factory, threatening the entire Southern Industrial Zone and its investments.
The question remains: When will society, officials, and the media collectively confront the greatest sources of risk without favoritism, personal interests, or selective attention?
