Oyo State Government has appealed to residents of the State to be more cautious in the handling of cooking and electrical appliances to minimise incessant fire disasters.
The Chief Fire Officer of the State, Mr. Moshood Adewuyi who spoke in an interview with reporters over the weekend said, a total of 191 fire incidents occurred between January and February this year alone.
Adewuyi regretted that “in many instances, carelessness of our people gave room for avoidable fire disasters.
“Majority of these disasters are caused when people left electrical appliances unattended to.
“Also, many left cooking gas unattended to. Living such things unattended to, caused many of the disasters that we have experienced overtime,” Adewuyi said.
On the recent inferno at Dugbe commercial area of the city of Ibadan, Adewuyi said a welder who was working close to where an highly inflammable content was kept, ignited the avoidable fire outbreak that caused business owners in the area to lose millions of naira to the disaster.
On the efforts of the Fire Service in the State, Adewuyi said in 2019 alone, 567 fire calls were received with 44 of it as false alarms, while 18 lives were saved with 20 others lost.
He said property saved, stood at N255.912 billion, while estimated loss was N689.590 million
Speaking on this year’s efforts, Adewuyi hinted that 266 calls were received between January 1st to April 20th, with 11 of such as false alarm, adding that, “property saved stood at N767,550billion while estimated loss was put at N375.460 million.
Adewuyi appealed to the people to stop the habit of using phones to record disasters, instead of making calls to appropriate places to alert them of the need to race to where disasters are taking place.
