Female Unilag students ‘fracture bones’ in fire outbreak

A fire outbreak at Madam Tinubu Hall (MTH), University of Lagos, has left many residents of the female hall with various degrees of injury, as students jumped from the first and second floors of the building to escape being burnt. No life was lost in the incident.

A trapped resident of the hall, who spoke to TheCable but asked not to be named, said the fire started at about 3.30-4.00am, creating panic and chaos in the hall.

“It was between 3.30 and 4.00am; I don’t know the exact time. We were seeing smoke and all of a sudden we just saw fire. My room is not very far from the exit of the hall, so we just ran to the door,” she said.

“The door was not open; the main gate was not open; we were shouting. We went to wake the porters and they came to open the door. It took time to open the door, about three to five minutes. Everyone was already scared, so when we got outside, we saw the fire coming out of that room [pointing to a room].”

Due to the inability to access exit routes, some ladies jumped off the first and second floors of the four-storeyed building, sustaining various degrees of injury, many of them fractured bones.

“Yes, some people jumped. I was lucky to be on the ground floor; there were people who were on the third, second floor; they didn’t know what was happening. They woke up all of a sudden and had to jump,” she continued.

“There were some people whose cases were severe, while others were minor; a lot of people jumped. Most of the people who jumped sustained injuries.”

The emergency exit was also locked, making it impossible for those who sought thoroughfare to have their way.

“Some people crawled under a gate inside the hostel because they were trapped; they couldn’t come out through the corridors and the windows.

“The emergency exit was also locked, people were shouting for the key; they couldn’t find it, even when the woman who came with it was trying to open it, she was shaking because everybody was scared. They had to jack the door.”
A particular student jumped from the second floor when she couldn’t maintain visibility to navigate her way through.

“A student jumped from the second floor, people were telling her not to jump, trying to tell her where to pass, but she said she couldn’t see, the smoke was too much, it was very dark, so she jumped.” The eye witness said.

The ladies on the ground floor ran to call for help, waking up security personnel and other students from Sodeinde and Fagunwa halls. The students from neighbouring halls came quickly to the scene to put out the fire. Some even brought bags of water to attempt putting out the fire before the university fire service arrived.

The fire service, which is just a few blocks away from the hall, came to the rescue and eventually extinguished the fire, while Rahmon Bello, a professor and vice chancellor of the school, and the acting dean of students affairs, were on ground to pacify students.

The source of the outbreak had not been identified as at Sunday evening, but the power grid was shut down immediately the fire was reported.

The official on duty at the Unilag fire service said the university fire service, as an indoor fire service provider, is always prepared to combat any outbreak within the university.

He admitted that the university had only one fire extinguishing vehicle, but said he reported early to the scene of the incident despite being off duty when the fire broke out.

“Sometimes, we may not have any outbreak for a month. Some other times, we may have two or three within a day. You know fire is unpredictable. We may be returning from one incident and we would get report for another; we just have to go,” he said.

“This is the only fire station in the university, with just one fire extinguishing vehicle. I can’t say, in the future, we may have more than one.”

Three students who were at the scene confirmed to TheCable that a number of students were receiving treatment at Igbobi orthopaedic hospital, Yaba, Lagos.

The Madam Tinubu Hall was established in 1981, 19 years after the university was founded in 1962.