Fadekemi Ajakaiye
A safety expert, Lasisi Adedoyin has said the best way to tackle fire is to prevent it.
Adedoyin, who trains people on fire, environment and safety, stated this at the launch of a book he co-authored with his wife, who’s also a fire officer with Lagos State Government.
He said, “The need for this book is because most of us see the incident that occurred in Lagos fire is becoming prevalent.”
He said they decided to author the book “is to put safety tips, fire prevention tips that each and every one of us can use in our homes in our offices to prevent fire. The building code is one of the things that is very, very common in Nigeria. But are people building using fire’s device in designing of the building?
“If you look at most of the estates, the gates of most of the states are small, even for fire ambulance to even access them is very, very difficult. People don’t know the laws.
“In this book, we have a chapter that is dedicated to regulatory law that guides fire in Nigeria. People don’t pathway for ambulance in this part of the world And that’s against the law. How do you expect a fire handler to get to the fire scene if people don’t make waypoints? We need to improve our turnaround for fire. And all these information how do we help for services there are hydrants around in the States, the hydrants around, but people build on the hydrants You see people building on canal also there are a lot of hydrants available in the state people vandalize them and if you vandalize they get to the fire scene, you have to move miles away before you can recharge the water. But the hydrants that are available if they are not vandalized, they can quickly recharge the ambulance and things gets easily. so it is very, very important for us to have those tips in place. And that’s why we decided to author this book so that this part of the world we don’t want a situation whereby codes that are foreign, You know most of the people when they want to design buildding they use foreign code, UK code and US Code however we have the national building code. We also have the fire code that is domesticated in Nigeria. Most practitioners in this field don’t know anything about it. And that’s the reason why we decided to bring this to Limelight or for everybody to relate. Each and every one of us always talk about the regulator. We talk about the practitioners. But the people, we have to protect ourselves, we need to guide ourselves. You are designing you give an architect, a building for you to design, the architect that design the building that did not put all those fire devices in place. Who is to blame? you are the one that will be at loss. I’ll give you an example one of the study was carried out over 300,000 estates are in Lekki axis the minimum value of all the houses in Lekki is 200 million but only 10% have fire extinguishers in their houses So in Nigeria we are ready to buy cars 5 million well what do we do? We go to the side of the road and buy fire extinguisher, which is not equivalent to the cars that we have. So we should stop putting the blame on the regulator. It’s our property. It’s our life, If the house got burnt it’s your investment. So why can’t you put the necessary things in place to protect your house rather than waiting for government or waiting for the practitioners to do it? Like we say ignorance of the law is not what it’s not an excuse. So if each and every one of us know this law if somebody I give somebody an architect a building to design for me, but I’m familiar with the law. I can ask the architect I can ask the engineer What are you doing? what the Lagos state’s government put tinnolace. In terms of fire are they in the building you designed for me? Are those things in place? That is the main reason why I think collaboration between governments and people is also very very important. Like the book reviewer said if you see something, you say something, if there is fire incident the video we just watched now it takes less than five minutes for the OBD to get burnt so if there’s fire incident. The next thing people do, they’ll be running around the time they are using to run around do could have called the fire service. People attend to fire it’s after they cannot control the fire. That is when they call fire service but in the stage of fire there is what we call a develop stage, at the develop stage.
If the fire has reached develop stage there is nothing any fire agent can do. But at the initial state,m you can put all the necessary things and stop the fire we’ve looked at the communication aspects when people call Fire Service in Lagos state, they will ask them you are calling from ? most of the community cannot know the local language of your area, people don’t know streets people don’t even know landmarks. If you turn out a fire vehicle that we’re coming to your house, okay, please number what? Hardly do People know this. So people do even know the major landmarks. So these are parts of the things hat reduced the turnaround of fire vehicles in Lagos state and that’s why citizens when they want to talk to when you make a call for fire, they should be cool.
Calm and give necessary information. If a fire truck is coming to your house, and they ask you what what are they likely things that you have in your house is because they want to know the types of apparatus they’d bring if you have chemical in your house they cannot come with water they have to come with form or othe hydrant but if you don’t tell them the source of the fire, and they have arrived the scene and it is a chemical that is burning They can’t use water because if they use water on chemical it causes poisonous in the air So they have to wait for another truck to come. The book is like a citizen guide to fire protection. Let’s take the responsibility to ourselves. Let’s protect our family. Let’s protect our property. Let’s protect the nation.”
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