There was record of huge loss following an evening fire which reduced to ashes items worth billions of naira in the Dry Store of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), South-East Zonal Office, Enugu. But for the intervention of the Enugu State Fire Service, the fire would have spread to the gas tank in the area and perhaps engulfed the entire premises.
The burnt Dry Store was said to have been built by South Africans in 2003, although the office complex was commissioned by the late Nigerian First Lady, Mrs. Stella Obasanjo, in 2002.
Daily Trust Saturday gathered that the facility store is where all the drugs and other health related items concerning primary/children’s health care coming from the federal government and international donor agencies are usually stocked pending their being deployed to the respective five states in the southeast – Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi and Imo.
The Enugu State Chief Fire Officer, Engr. Okwudiri Ohaa, attributed the cause of the inferno to possible electric fault. The fire brought down the building and reduced to ashes and charred ‘skeletons, all its contents – brand new heavy duty generators, four folk lifters, medical expendables, thousands of cartons of syringes, among other things.
When Daily Trust reporter visited the Dry Store after the incident, coils of smoke were still seen coming out from the burnt remains of the facilities in the dry store as the staff declined comments on the grounds that they were not authorized to speak to journalists. They instead referred our reporter to the Zonal Director, Mrs. Adimora.
After several visits and unanswered messages, when our reporter finally saw her, she simply said: “Investigation is still on-going. The fire service will advise on what to do. I wouldn’t want to pre-empt the report of investigation.”
Asked whether the fire outbreak had affected the operation of the NPHCDA in the zone, Adimora, who also insisted that she needed authorization from the Abuja Head Office to talk to the press retorted: “Certainly, it should affect our operation because it’s our dry store and most of the items there burnt.”
A senior staff, who pleaded anonymity because of possible reprimand by management, told Daily Trust: “Most of the things there are consumables. Everything burnt down. Not even a pin was saved. The fire started in the evening (of Sunday, September 2, 2018). We have machines of different types there and they all got destroyed. We are still looking at our records to be able to ascertain the value of items destroyed by the inferno. It’s from there we distribute to other states within the southeast zone.”
None of the staff could give an insight into the impression or reaction of the officials from Abuja who came to ascertain the extent of destruction caused by the fire.
However, the state Chief Fire Officer, Engr Okwudiri Ohaa, recalled that he was in his village attending a crucial meeting when he received an urgent call in respect of the fire outbreak that Sunday evening. He had to cut short his visit, alerted his officers in the city and rushed back to Enugu.
A combined team of fire fighters from the Enugu Government House Fire Unit and the main Fire Service Station at Ogui Road, extinguished the inferno, although he regretted that “by the time they called us, the fire had gone far but we made sure we stopped it from spreading to the gas tank in the area.”
He said the Divisional Police Officer at Ikirike Police Station and a team of policemen protected the premises from 7.30pm till 2am the following day, to make sure that miscreants did not exploit the situation.
Ohaa further said: “We’ve made suggestions to organisations; we now have to go on air to do fire drilling training for people. We want to announce on air that people who have such establishments should come to us for advice on fire fighting in case of incidents. The training is free; it doesn’t cost anything.
“We’ve learnt from what happened in other states where fire disaster arising from gas leakage caused several deaths. We are visiting Petrol and Gas stations in the state to enlighten them on what to do. We don’t want to be taken unawares,” he said, adding: “We have bought the necessary chemicals to take care of such situations.”
Ohaa, who noted that the fire service was more or less a moribund place before Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi came onboard, said the governor has personally visited the state fire service in order to improve on the facilities there.
He said currently, the state has 12 fire trucks, except one that is faulty while the state government has built additional fire stations, noting that the dream of Governor Ugwuanyi is to have functional fire service outfits in all the 17 local council areas of the state for quick response to fire incidents anywhere in the rural areas.
