How NNPC inferno inspired
me to go into fire-fighting — Owolabi who trained as auto engineer
By MIKE JIMOH
Sunday,
February 11,
2006
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•On
the move... Owolabi on duty
•Photo: Sun News Publishing
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Pray that you don’t get to see Samuel Adewunmi Owolabi
around your neighbourhood because that means there is a fire somewhere. Pray,
also, that somebody like him responds in case of any emergency because he is the
ever-ready fireman to have on hand rather than wait eternally for grumpy official
firemen who never have water in their antiquated trucks.
There is a certain
bounce in Owolabi’s step that you see at once he is a fireman ready to go,
not tied to office work re-writing memos for refills or perpetually griping about
low pay and increasing responsibilities. When Sunday Sun met
him for an appointed interview one afternoon last week, Owolabi not only came
on the dot but was suited for any emergency if it had come.
In unpredictable
cities like Lagos with even more unpredictable residents, fire can start anywhere,
anytime - a carelessly placed candle in a home, a leaking gas in a kitchen or
an electrical trip-off in a factory. As he rode that afternoon all the way from
Ogun state where his office is, it could have happened just anywhere and that
would have been a call to duty for Owolabi.
He has a walkie-talkie to
take any distress call from any part of the city, even from far-off villages.
For example, he boasts, if his company had known of the Lisa crash early enough
after it happened, he or some other rider would have roared there at once in a
power bike, calling up reinforcement from his office.
Fortunately, no emergency
call came on the day the newspaper met the fireman. Still, Owolabi zoomed into
The Sun headquarters in Apapa, Lagos, on a power bike, a Triumph aptly called
Challenger with rugged tyres to navigate even more rugged terrain. Back-packed
with a first-aid kit and liquid and gas extinguishers, Owolabi can reach the remotest
disaster area five or so minutes after the first distress call where chunky and
antiquated government trucks would take forever.
It is just fitting that
he works not in a government fire outfit but a private one, Last Fire Response
Company, the first of its kind in the country. The Last in the name is not lost
on any discerning reader. They’ve been on for some time. They also manufacture
some fire safety devices for home and industrial use. “Right now,”
says Owolabi, “we are working towards sensitizing the nation on fire disasters
in markets, offices, schools, homes and labs.”
True, anyone looking
around much will see that Nigerians are not quite fire safety conscious. For instance,
they spend millions and millions of naira building mansions ringed with intimidating
American barbed wire but without as much as installing fire extinguishers of about
a few thousand naira. Car owners are even guiltier. There have been cases of vehicles
burning down completely on highways simply because no extinguisher was available.
At such instances, Nigerians resort to panicky and often ridiculous measures.
Owolabi,
45, swears he has seen men in the past trying to put out raging fires in bathroom
slippers where they should be properly kitted. And yet, most fire outbreaks needn’t
be if only Nigerians are safety conscious enough.
That sensitization is
what Owolabi and some his of colleagues are now doing. So far, they have been
to a newspaper house in Lagos where they had a two-day seminar on containing fire
outbreaks. There have been visits to a dozen corporate bodies as well. But most
of these places seem to concentrate on security alone.
As Owolabi explains,
“two types of robbers destroy homes, the external one and the internal one:
“The external one is the one we know with the gun; you can negotiate with
him but not so the internal robber. You can’t negotiate with fire. It takes
both property and life. Nigerians usually don’t want to listen to us until
it happens before they learn.”
If you think the fireman is just blowing
hot, then hear his next complaint. Part of the enlightenment campaign is done
for free, except that specially requested by corporate bodies. So, Last Fire trailed
it to the Ministry of Education in Lagos state several times to seek permission
to carry their campaign to secondary schools.
“You know kids are
impressionable. We thought teaching them a few things about fire safety would
help a lot, especially more so that they will in turn teach their parents.”
But they were turned down flat. “I have all the letters we wrote to them
and even their own saying they received our letters.” Up till now, the ministry
has not accepted the company’s educative exercise.
Uncompromising
ministries isn’t Owolabi’s only headache. Private companies are equally
negligent of safety measures. Most companies around, he submits, have their securities
but no provision is made for safety experts. The result is that while company
property is secured from theft, the same property can go up in flames in a matter
of minutes because there are no safety experts around to stop fires.
“When
you tell them to marry safety and security, they don’t believe until it
happens,” Owolabi insists. “All we have in companies are security
men but no safety men to complement them.” Worse still, there are no smoke
detectors. It is advisable, according to the fireman, to have instead of 40 security
men, 10 men for safety who can work round the clock complementing the security.
There is a point. Most of the fire outbreaks in Nigeria have all occurred at night.
With two or three safety staff on hand, some or all would have been safely contained.
Trained as an automobile engineer, Owolabi got to be a fireman by accident.
After his tertiary education in Kano, he proceeded to Japan for further studies.
It was on his return to Nigeria that he finally decided to pick up the fire suit,
“after fire razed NNPC building in Lagos.”
Owolabi used to
have a friend in what was an architectural marvel at Falomo. “By the time
I saw the building after the fire, NNPC edifice had become something different,
something ugly.”
Evidently, Owolabi from Osun state and married with
children felt concerned enough to prevent future fires by signing up with a security
outfit, Pahek. Now, he is the coordinator of Last Fire Company, with staff strength
of 18, four administrative staff and the rest on the field.
Fighting fire
is risky business and only firemen feel the heat enough to know. For protection,
Owolabi wears a special uniform called Vapon 3, “it is fire resistant for
up to seven minutes,” his boots are fire-proof and the neon stripes round
his biceps and trouser leg make him visible even in the darkest smoke. In very
bad cases, a firefighter has to wear what he calls SBA, Special Breathing Apparatus.
It has to be worn on the nose to supply oxygen as well as prevent any chemical
from entering the nose. SBAs are especially useful in chemical explosions.
Combating
fires alone isn’t Owolabi’s priority. While on induction in Japan,
he set to work perfecting some of his inventions. One of them – called gas
shutter - is now in common use in homes and industries. It is shaped like a spark
plug and can be fitted between the regulator and the hose “to serve as fuse
in case of leakage or if something happens at the end of the cooker” Instead
of resulting in fire, it shuts off the cooker automatically.
Another one
Owolabi researched on for 11 months is called fire boss, a kind of extinguisher
that if fire starts in the bonnet of a car, it detonates and coats the entire
engine with liquid extinguisher. There are many more in the offing.
But for
now, Owolabi is content putting out fires the best way he can, as a fireman on
the move. |
