The firefighting and rescue operations to be carried out by fire-fighters may be hampered by the complexity of the design layout of rock caverns especially at the initial stage of firefighting and leading the evacuees to escape. The problem may be escalated in case of only limited means of access leading to the interior of the rock cavern provided. The situation may be exacerbated in case that the access tunnel is designed as a descending tunnel instead of horizontal tunnel given that the large amount of smoke/flammable gases is accumulated at main entrance with larger tilted angle.

This paper aims at exploring the potential risks to be encountered by the fire-fighters when they arrive at scene of a fire involving a rock cavern with various types of access tunnel. Two types of design fire sizes in three types of access tunnel, e.g. horizontal, ascending, descending tunnels with different tilted angles to a cubic cavern space were studied by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations as well. Various correlations of key scientific criteria affecting fire service intervention in rock cavern were identified and discussed. Subsequently, according to the predicted results, recommendations in terms of mitigations on inherent risks of barrier to fire service intervention in rock caverns are proffered.