Abia State Governor, Dr. Alex Otti, has mandated that all business establishments in the state must install fire extinguishers on their premises to prevent future fire outbreaks and safeguard lives and property in Abia State.
The directive is in response to a series of fire outbreaks in Aba, particularly the recent incident at Chisco Transport Company office on Milverton Avenue, which occured on Wednesday evening.
Governor Otti who paid an on the spot visit to the company to see the extent of damage, announced that enforcement of the policy on installation of fire extinguishers would commence next week.
While expressing concern over the densely populated nature of areas like Milverton Avenue, Governor Otti hinted at potential plans to relocate some motor parks to more spacious locations.
He emphasized the need for a safer environment to mitigate the risk of disaster and added that government will look at other parks at Osisioma and Port Harcourt Road with more space with a view to moving some of the vehicles at Milverton Avenue there.
“If you noticed, in the last few weeks, there has been several fire incidents in Aba. That tells me that there things we’ve been doing that we are not doing well. In the first instance, every facility must have fire extinguishers and we are going to enforce it from next week.
“We will also try and get more fire trucks because I’m told that when the fire was going to over power the service men, they had to seek back up from Umuahia and that’s a distance”.
“I think it’s time we relocated the parks to a more spacious place. We can’t have everybody clustering in a place. This is a recipe for disaster.
“I know that there are parks around Osisioma and parts of Port-harcourt road. We are going to go and have a look at them and ensure that we relocate a lot of these vehicles to the parks so that it could be easy for us to move if there is any incident”, Gov Otti said.
Governor Otti pledged to procure additional fire trucks to bolster the firefighting capabilities in Aba and commended the prompt response of the state fire service in containing the Chisco office fire, promising support for affected businesses to mitigate their losses.
The Mayor of Aba South, Chief Uche Nwogu who described the incident as most unfortunate, thanked God that no life was lost.
“it is unfortunate that in a small place like this, we have diesel dump which might have aggravated the fire incident.
“There was a spark from the generator. It exploded , diesel must have aided it. When I got here yesterday, people were scouping diesel from the drainage which is unacceptable. You can’t have diesel dump here.
“I also suspect that other transport companies might have the same thing . It is not acceptable“, Chief Nwogu said.
He emphasized the importance of fire safety measures and urged transport companies to operate from designated parks rather than congested city centers.
Also narrating the ordeal, the Park Manager of CHISCO Companies in Aba Loading Bay, Mr. Ikechukwu Nwosu said the fire started when they noticed a spark as they did a change over after puting on a generating set to pump water.
He highlighted the substantial losses incurred in the inferno to include; valuable assets worth millions of naira, two luxury buses,a hummer bus, motorcycles, among other items and appealed to the state government for assistance.
