An eight-storey section of the old National Assembly Complex at Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS),
Race Course, Lagos went up in flames yesterday.
The fire was said to have started from the second floor and spread to the sixth.
The fire, it was learnt, started few minutes past 1pm.
An eyewitness said: “It was 1:30pm when I heard people shouting, “fire, fire” and we all ran out of the building. There was thick smoke coming out. Nobody got injured. I even forgot my shoes while running out.”
Another witness said: “We were about to start working when we saw fire coming out of the building. We could not complete what we came to do.”
Officials from the Federal Fire Service, State Fire Service and National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) rushed down to quench the fire.
Lagos State Fire Service Director Rasak Fadipe said the agency got a distress call around 2:50pm, stating that the second, third, fourth and fifth were affected.
Fadipe said: “When I got the distress call that there was fire on the Island and it was a high-rise building, I immediately dispatched four fire trucks to the place. One from Sari-Iganmu, one from Ilupeju and two from Alausa. When we arrived, we discovered that the building was smoke-blocked and we could not gain access into the building because it was completely burglar-proof so we had to make use of our cutting equipment to get in.
“During the process, we discovered that the floors were partitioned and the fire had engulfed the floors. In a situation like this where it is a high-rise building and it is made of glass, it is easy for the fire to spread to other floors and fighting this type of fire is delicate because it is easy to get injured from flying debris. There were no casualties involved.”
NEMA’s South West Zonal Cordinator Yakubu Sulaiman said the cause of the fire could not be ascertained.
He said: “Fire fighting is going on but assessment cannot be done until tomorrow (today).”
The building houses the Zonal Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, the Zonal Office of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, the Zonal Office of the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
from the nation
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