Lagos Island fire: LASG to conduct material integrity tests on six buildings

The Lagos State Government on Friday said material integrity tests would be carried out on six buildings close to the buildings razed down by fire on Dosunmu Street, Lagos Island.

Four buildings were affected by the fire incident that occurred at Dosunmu Street, Lagos Island on Wednesday in which goods worth multi-millions of naira were lost.

The Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, who was at the scene of the Dosunmu fire tragedy on Friday, said six buildings would undergo integrity tests to ascertain their structural durability.

He said if the buildings failed the integrity tests, they would be demolished immediately to avert building collapse.

Oke-Osanyintolu said the Wednesday fire incident began around 7.00 am, saying within 10 minutes of the incident, LASEMA arrived at the scene and took charge within 20 minutes.

“We have been on the ground since Wednesday, we have been able to curtail the fire. The buildings are built in such a way that there is poor accessibility. There was no casualty or mortality, it affected four buildings and two were down. I sympathised with those who lost their buildings. We are still doing damping. We will subject the adjacent building to material integrity tests to determine what we will do next.

“If the building fails material testing, we will bring it down to ground zero. We are going to do material testing on six buildings in all,” he said.

Oke-Osanyintolu appealed to traders and others to abide by the rules, saying that they could not continue to do things the same way and expect different results.

“I need to appeal to the people of Lagos State, our people need to abide by the rule, you cannot continue to do the same thing thinking that you are going to get different results.

“It is not possible, what we are appealing to them to do is to abide by all safety procedures, they should not store diesel inside their shops, and they should not use inflammable materials. While they are building their houses, they should use materials that will prevent fire from skipping from one building to the other.

“They should keep to the building code, there should be space between one building to another. These are things they should put in place to ensure we do not have this kind of occurrence,” Oke-Osanyintolu said.

The LASEMA boss also debunked claims that there was no fire hydrant when the fire incident took place.

“There was no challenge of any fire hydrants, the only challenge was accessibility to the scene of the incident. All Emergency responders moved to the scene immediately, we have more than 20 fire trucks on the ground to fight the fire. Mr Governor was monitoring and evaluating what was going on.

“The issue of fire hydrants did not arise. We have fire hydrants located strategically around Lagos State. The good thing is that in terms of emergency, we are well prepared,” he said.

On comment made by the spokesman of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) that there was not enough water to quell the fire, Oke-Osanyintolu said “NEMA said there was no water, did they come with any equipment? They did not come with any equipment, they are only saying that NEMA has no water, they are not talking about Lagos State.

“They are talking about what is happening in their organisation, but when I talk, I talk of what happened on the ground. I say it loud and clear, I brought in 20 fire fighting equipment here, both public and private. Within ten minutes the incident occurred, we took ownership. We have done all the needful and provided all that is needed to be provided. Our effort yielded dividends, that is why there was no mortality,” he said.