By Bose Adelaja

What happens when you receive and respond to a distress call, but end up getting attacked by hoodlums who pretend to offer assistance to the victims, loot personal effects at the scene and leave you with varying degrees of injuries?

The Lagos State Fire Services says this is the major challenge confronting its operation in the past two years, adding that except urgent measures are taken, the situation will continue to affect quick response of its officials to distress calls.

Speaking about the situation recently, the Director, Lagos State Fire Services, Razaq Fadipe, said officials of this emergency organisation were on 64 occasions rough handled by hoodlums between 2012 and 2014.

Some of the cases he cited to buttress this claim occurred on Tuesday January 8, 2013 at No 6 Mba Street, Achapo area of Ajegunle, Thursday Sept 4, 2014 at Kuramo area of Ajah where over 300 lock up shops were razed and also on August 18, 2014 at Cole street, Ebute-Metta and Tuesday September 2, 2014 at No 43 Church street, Alapere, Ketu which saw his men being rough handled by criminals, while some fire services trucks were vandalised.

The most alarming of these cases, according to Fadipe, was the Ebute-Metta attack where his men were operating at Kadara, Cole and Osholanke streets simultaneously but were alerted that the fire was escalating. ‘’I sent another truck which passed through Cole Street. Unfortunately some hoodlums rough handled our men, stoned them and vandalised the trucks. You can imagine how impatient our people are when it comes to emergency issues.”

The fire boss who described the situation as unlawful, added that such actions hamper afforts in fire fighting. He told VM thus: ‘’From 2012 till date, we have recorded 64 cases of attacks by hoodlums.

At every point on arrival at the various scenes, my men were rough handled and the hoodlums smashed the wind screens of the trucks and this has led to the trucks being grounded. How do we respond to emergency calls if our tools are grounded? They don’t know the implication of what they are doing and should therefore be checked. We were not the cause of the various fire outbreaks and if we don’t want to respond to their distress calls, we would not have been present at the scene”.

Asked if arrests have been made in connection with this development, he said: ‘’We are not a security outfit but we usually contact the Police but the situation at the scene usually pose problems for any arrest to be made because our watchword is ‘’safety first”.

As I speak with you, we have three stations which have their windscreens damaged and the consequence is that the affected vehicles are likely to be grounded and the stations will be unable to attend to emergencies in those locations.

This has reduced our responses because a directive has been given to seek Police’ assistance in the course of going to problem-prone areas. We all know that the Police also have their own challenges and by the time we await the challenges to be sorted out, a lot of time is wasted and this falls back to the public as the fire would have ravaged or escalated before the arrival of our men.

CDA to the rescue

The fire services boss also appealed to Community Development Associations, CDAs, in the state to assist in curtailing the problem. ‘’I appeal to CDAs to talk to their residents against damaging government property because it is the general public that usually bears the brunt of the repercussion,” he said.

On causes of fire outbreak, Fadipe said: ‘’There are four major causes of fire outbreak which are accidents, natural cause, human errors or a combination of these. But the nonchallant attitude of our people have been the major cause of disaster.

For instance, most fire incidents are usually caused by human errors in the sense that many people do not care about professionalism during installation of electricity in their buildings as typified by clustered cables found everywhere, especially in the markets.

Another major cause is epileptic power supply which has led to many shop owners acquiring power generating sets of various sizes. Also, many traders don’t adhere to the government directives that all markets should be closed by 6pm for security and safety reasons but some of them have been making use of local lamps and this makes it easier for fire to degenerate in case of an outbreak”.

32 fire trucks

Fadipe also told VM that any moment from now, 32 fire trucks will arrive the state to complement the existing ones. ‘’We are planning to have a stakeholders forum because 32 fire trucks are on the sea and will arrive any moment from now. It is behoves on us that they are protected and safe guarded while the CDAs and law enforcement agencies will soon come together to brain storm on how to ensure we put an end to the barbaric way of our people.

“Many of us, especially the elites who buy houses, do not care to check electricity wires and cables before putting the houses into use. At renovation of such buildings, they start buying electrical equipment while forgetting that the existing cables should be changed because they have their own capacity of the machines they can power. Once you bring in more weight than a cable can carry, it will cause havoc,” he stated.

Appeal to Lagosians

Fadipe reiterated is appeal that people should always be patient, and understand that “we don’t have any other business than protecting the lives and property of residents.

What we expect from them is cooperation, in the outside world; people don’t cluster at the scene of an emergency. Here in Nigeria, people struggle with the hose which sometimes leads to it being twisted or uncoiled and you have no option than to straighten it before reconnecting to the pump”.