Date: 2017-10-20

Mr Abdulwaheed Yakub, Head of Department of Fire Prevention, Kwara Fire Service, has expressed concern over false fire outbreak alarms being raised by some residents in the state.

He said this in an in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Ilorin.

Yakub, who warned perpetrators to desist, said his men received three false fire outbreak alarms in a day from some unidentified residents of the state.

He said the three false fire alarms were received from Tanke, Akerebiata and Sango area, Ilorin, all in the state capital on Wednesday alone.

Yakub said that the materials and manpower enough to put out any fire disaster were moved to the areas only to discover that there were no fire outbreaks in any part of the area.

He described the act of unidentified callers as wasting of meagre resources and manpower at the disposal of the State Fire Service.

"It was unfortunate that we received three false fire outbreak alarms in a day, this is wasting of our resources when we got to those places and did not see any outbreak," Yakub said.

He expressed the readiness of the state Fire Service to attend to emergencies at any moment and warned residents of the state to desist from giving false alarm.

Yakub said that the service was already investigating the people involved, saying that they may be arrested and prosecuted.

The Head of fire prevention department noted that the number of fire incidences in the state since January has significantly reduced when compared with 2016.

Yakub said the state Fire Service would further intensify its sensitisation programme to reduce incidence of fire outbreak in the state.