No less than 3 hostel blocks at Federal Government Girls College (FGGC), Old Umuahia in Umuahia South Local Government Area of Abia State, were reportedly gutted by fire on Tuesday, July 26.
Newsmen confirmed that every other thing except lives were lost during the explosion that involved the school’s Junior Secondary School (JSS 2) students.
They were reportedly writing exams when the fire started.
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Sources within the school told newsmen that the JSS 3 block was also affected but occupied by the JSS 2 students as those in JSS 3 had gone home after they had finished their exams.
Meanwhile, the cause of the fire has been linked to an electrical fault or power surge.
“The three hostel blocks contain over 400 students. Three blocks were affected by the fire. Most of the students’ property and provision were affected. Mattresses and beds got burnt.
“The students left for evening classes and a few minutes later, one of the matrons started shouting Fire. Everybody around had to rush to the scene,” a source said.
Acting State Fire Chief, Mr. Arua Nnanna also confirmed the incident.
He said;
“The cause of the fire has not been established, but from the report that we got from the field, we are suspecting electrical fault. At the time of the incident, the students were not inside the hostel.
“They were at the other side of the hostel doing one thing or the other because exams was going on.
“The fire engulfed their mattresses, beds, and other valuables of students. The fire started from one room to the other and by the time they called, we were able to cut the spread of the fire.
“If not because of our presence, the fire could have engulfed the entire hostel blocks, but our presence limited it to a section.
“It will be difficult to estimate the damage of the fire because they lost so much. The damage runs into millions of naira. We equally saved property worth several millions of naira as well.
“From my assessment, each of the rooms contains about 20-30 students and about 3 hostels out of 5 blocks were affected. What they had to fight the fire was not enough, even though they had a fire extinguisher.
“They don’t have an early warning system; a smoke detector. The early warning system could have helped them and the damage wouldn’t have been much. But before they could raise an alarm, the fire had already overpowered the staff and others who were there to fight the fire.”
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