Woman dies in Lagos fire accident

A woman identified died in a fire accident in Lagos on Thursday, officials have confirmed.

The accident occurred at about 3.10 a.m. at No. 7 Jemigbon Street, Apollo Estate, off Elebiju, Ketu, Lagos.

The Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA, said a duplex which was converted to flats was gutted by fire as a result of power surge from one of the mini flats on the first floor of the building.

The fire, LASEMA said, then spread to other flats in the building.

The incident prompted the immediate activation of LASEMA’s Emergency Response Team, ERT, including the LRU Fire Unit and the Lagos State Fire Service to the scene of the incident, to prevent the spread of the inferno to other buildings in the estate.

“Further investigation revealed that (the) inferno which engulfed the entire building got the adult female entrapped and severely burnt,” Kehinde Adebayo, LASEMA spokesperson, said.

He added that the body of the deceased, said to be a staff of the National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN, reportedly was recovered by the LASEMA team. It was later handed over to the State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit, SEHMU, and has since been deposited at the Lagos Mainland General Hospital Mortuary.

Meanwhile, the General Manager of LASEMA, Adesina Tiamiyu, sympathised with the family of the deceased.

He, however, reiterated the need for house owners to put safety into consideration during building construction, adding that provision of more than one emergency exit routes and installation of surge
protectors should be put in place.

He said installation of fire alarm systems should be considered important, too, to avoid loss of lives and property to fire incidents.