Tina Amanda
Federal Fire Service, Rivers State division, has said it is enforcing the use of the National Fire Safety Code in companies and public buildings in order to minimize fire outbreaks across the nation.
Assistant Fire Superintendent, Abas Regan, who stated this in Portharcourt during his visit to the fire safety code enforcement office, said the Fire Safety Code contains information that will help to arrest the spread of fire during a fire disaster.
According to him, the public needs to cooperate with firefighters to do their job effectively whenever there is a fire outbreak, stressing that hoodlums sometimes hijack the scene thereby making their work difficult.
“The national fire code empowers us to carry out fire assessment, we go to companies and public buildings not to indict them, but to see what they have, advice, make recommendations and give them some duration to close up, it also makes our job easier once you comply with all the necessary fire safety code regulations.
“The federal government has approved so many funds to purchase fire equipment which we have received some and distributed to some states and more are still coming, we want to make sure that the issue of fire is minimized to the minimum level in the states”
He urged the public to take fire outbreak more seriously and have every fire fighting equipment in their homes and workplace, adding that what kills people is not the fire, but inhaling the smoke first
“Fire prevention should be everyone’s responsibility because fire is not a respecter of any person, it affects lives psychologically, mentally, so the fact is to have all fire equipment in the house, the fire extinguisher, know how to do fire drilling in the house, have a smoke detector, it helps, it saves lives because smoke detector alerts when there is smoke in the house or public building which helps for easy evacuation from the scene”
