Harmattan: Expert Tasks Nigerians on Fire Prevention, Safety At Shopping Mall

As harmattan is blowing harder leading to fire incidents in some instances, an environment expert, Mrs Aramide Akin-Bankole has advised property owners and facilities managers on the need to adequately protect their properties by not storing hazardous products within the mall and make robust plan for fire prevention and maintenance program.

Akin-Bankole spoke recently in an interview on the need to embrace safety practice of providing adequate safeguards to reduce life and property loss caused by fire.

"A fire incident can only occur when there is a rapid chemical reaction between three essential elements of fuel, heat and oxygen accompanied by a release of energy in the form of heat, smoke and flame," she said.

She posited that harmattan fire could be caused by carelessness and ignorance, accidental and arsenic fire, natural cause from earthquakes, volcano eruption, lightening and thunders.

According to her, a clear knowledge of the various classes of fire and the right fire extinguishers to use often goes a long way in arresting the fire in the case of any fire incident.

She gave the classes of fire as A, which she said consists of solid combustible materials, saying that these are usually organic carbonaceous in nature such as wood, paper, cloth, leather, etc.

"Class B consists of fires involving highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons such as petrol, kerosene, diesel, oil paints and liquefiable solid like bitumen, margarine, shea butter etc. Class C fire consists of gaseous or liquefied gases in form of liquid spillage or gas leak such as propane, hydrogen, methane, hydrogen sulphide, butane etc.

"Class D fire consists of combustible metal such as magnesium, zinc, copper, lead, bronze, aluminum etc.,Class F fire: - this is fire caused by cooking oils such as chip pan fires, and  electrical fires," she said.

She stressed that for these classes of fire, there are fire extinguishers made to match which she said are dry powder extinguisher that can be used for class A, B, C and electrical fires, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is used for class B, D fires as well as Wet chemical Extinguishers that she said ia used for class F, A and Water Extinguishers used mostly for classes A and B.