By Stanley Onyekwere
The FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has disclosed there were no human casualties recorded from the Karmo Market fire incident, but goods worth millions of naira were destroyed.
FEMA said it received a distress call from the National Emergency Call Centre ,112 notifying the Agency of the fire outbreak at the Market located in the densely populated community, in Abuja Municipal Area Council of the FCT, which the Agency immediately activated the FCT Fire Service, Federal Fire Service and NEMA to join it’s response team, and on noticing that the fire was spreading, it requested additional fire stations from the mutual fire service institutions.
Director General of the Agency, Alhaji Abbas Idriss, said with the support of military, the Nigeria Police Force DSS, FRSC and other Security Agency’s
combined efforts, the fire was brought under control at about 4.41am.
Idriss, in a statement from Head, FEMA Pubic Relations Unit (PRU), Nkechi Isa, commended the search and rescue team of FEMA, shop owners, security agencies, community leaders and the people of Karmoy for efforts to salvage some goods and properties from the inferno.
He added that the loss and assessors team of FEMA, NEMA, traders associations, Area Council Local Emergency Management Committee as well as security agencies are on the field to get an estimated value of losses incurred by the traders.
He however disclosed that, FEMA was working with all relevant agencies to ascertain the proximate cause of the fire and would forward a full report to the administration after the investigations.
He also commiserated with traders affected by the inferno, on behalf of the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, and his counterpart, the Minister of State, Dr. Ramatu Tijjani Aliyu.
While reiterating the call for the segmentation of markets in the FCT, the FEMA boss appealed to traders not to reside in markets.
He added that traders are also cautioned not to cook in the market and where there is electricity, all appliances should be put off to avoid a repeat of such inferno.
