Federal Fire Service Tackles 85 Fire Incidents In S’East

The Federal Fire Service
says it has tackled 85 fire incidents across the South-East zone in 2015.
It attributed the incidents to factors such as human errors (carelessness), arson and accidents.
The Zonal Commander of the Service, Mr Joseph Esinwoke, told newsmen in Enugu  that majority of the fire incidents were in the markets, destroying property worth billions of naira.
“In a nutshell, we had about 85 cases of significant fire incidents and we were able to attend to such fire outbreaks.
“But there were the ones we were unable to attend, probably because of late information.
“Like the Obingwa INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) office fire incident.
“In fact we got to know about that incident after 24 hours and there is no magic we can do to attend to it.’’
Esinwoke said that valuables, wares and property worth billions of naira were destroyed in the incidents.
He stressed the need for timely information from the public about outbreak of fire and urged the public to always alert the service promptly to enable it take immediate action on such incidents.
The commander identified“ human negligence” as the major cause of fire outbreaks, describing it as“ avoidable error”.
“ Precisely, we have three common causes of fire. “We have what is called carelessness; that is carefree attitudes. What you may refer to as human errors and things like that.
“We have fires that are being caused by accident; we also have willful act (arson).
“Most of these fire incidents were caused by human errors, which is closely aligned to carelessness.
“Like the 85 fires (incidents) I have mentioned last year were mainly market fires.’’
Esinwoke, therefore, urged people to be safety conscious within their workplaces or homes.