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Fire Destroys Government Secondary School Hostels In Abia

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Fire Destroys Government Secondary School Hostels In Abia

On Tuesday, July 26, a fire completely destroyed several hostel buildings at Federal Government Girls College (FGGC), Old Umuahia in Umuahia South Local Government Area of Abia State.

According to The Nation, no lives were lost during the incident which affected the Junior Secondary School (JSS 2) students of the college.

No properties were retrieved from the disaster as the students were reportedly writing their exams when the fire broke out.

According to insiders at the school, the JSS 2 class was occupying the JSS 3 block since the JSS 3 students had left after their examinations were over to go home.

An electrical failure or power surge has been identified as the primary cause of the fire.

According to a source, “The three hostel blocks contain over 400 students. Three blocks were affected by the fire. Most of the students’ property and provisions 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.”

Mr Arua Nnanna, the acting state fire chief, confirmed the incident saying, “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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