Twenty-eight persons died in fire disasters in Gombe State, while 699 lives were saved by the state’s fire service in 2021.
This was contained in data made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Gombe on Friday by Mr Mahmoud Salihu, a Deputy Operation Officer of the service.
The data also revealed that property worth N2.23 billion were lost to fire disasters, while property worth N7 billion were saved in the year under review.
Also, during the period, 280 incident calls were received, while 59 persons recorded various degrees of injuries.
Meanwhile, Salihu told NAN that the service was prepared to combat fire outbreaks in 2022.
According to him, the service would take proactive measures to ensure that its personnel were regularly trained in 2022 to combat fire outbreaks while strengthening sensitisation.
He advised residents of the state to be more careful in handling issues that could result in fire disasters in view of the havoc fire could wreak on communities.
The fire officer said, “If you have cooking gas, please always check properly to ensure that it is turned off before going to bed, and always check electrical installations for faulty cables while insisting experts fix any faults.”
Salihu further advised that the kitchen should be separated from the store where “people often put inflammable materials like petrol and even generators; keep them far from your kitchen.
He said, “Also, if you must put on generators, kindly ensure that you put off the generator before refuelling it to avoid any fire disasters; this is important for residential areas and even shopping malls.”
Salihu further advised residents of the state to acquire firefighting equipment like fire blankets and extinguishers to quickly control the fire before they become a disaster.
He, however, warned those who engaged in false fire incident calls to desist from such acts as it demoralized personnel’s morale during operations.
