The Federal Fire Service, FFS, is working on an automatic call system in collaboration with private organisations to enable it to respond promptly to distress calls.
Mr. Olusegun Okebiorun, Controller General of the FFS, said this while answering questions at the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Forum on Sunday in Abuja.
He attributed the perceived poor response of the fire service to distress calls to the fact that most people did not know and did not bother to know the FFS’ emergency numbers to reach when there was a fire outbreak.
“You see, the response of fire service is a function of how long it takes you to call the fire service.
“If you take a statistics of people in this country and you take 100 people; if you are lucky, you get 10 people that will know the number to call.
“This is a big problem in this country and to overcome this problem, the Service has already devised a means with a private organisation, on system of automatic call,” Okebiorun said.
He added: “It comprises of a smoke alarm detector integrated with a GSM system. So, if you have a smoke detector, this one is integrated with a GSM line”.
“If there is fire, immediately the smoke gets to the alarm system, it will trigger off to alert the people in the place that there is fire.”
According to him, the system is capable of making automatic calls to the Service whenever there is a fire, resulting in early detection and quick response.
“It is going to be all over this country. They will see the location and through that electronic map, you will be able to see the street where that fire occurs and then the men will easily turn out to that street.
“So, we are looking at a case of one minute for the firemen to get out of their station and move to the fire scene,“ he said.
The Controller General noted that because most people did not know the number to call when there was a fire outbreak, they ended up crying and resorting to the use of “running callers”, individuals using cars or motorcycles.
He noted that it sometimes took the running callers between five and 10 minutes to get to the nearest fire station to report a fire outbreak.
“A fire which burns for 10 minutes is already out of control, adding, “it takes only five minutes for any fire to gain an edge.”
Okebiorun said two other factors responsible for the poor response of firemen to distress calls were the status of vehicular traffic during a fire outbreak and the level of cooperation from the public.
He said, however, that to overcome the traffic obstruction, the FFS was planning to develop and install automatic access to fire engines at traffic control points.
“It works in the form that there will be a chip in the fire engine
which would be identified by the system right on the control junction,’’ he said.
which would be identified by the system right on the control junction,’’ he said.
The controller general said once the engine detected any fire outbreak about 100 metres away, it would give fire fighters’ vehicles the right of way and block other roads.
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