Educational institutions must have safety officers - Fire Service advises

The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has called on educational institutions to recruit safety officers who will ensure that facilities in the schools are safe from fire outbreaks.

That, according to the service, would help reduce the increasing occurrences of fire outbreaks in schools in the country.

So far, about four senior high schools (SHS) have been hit with fire outbreaks this year.

The affected schools are Accra Academy in the Greater Accra Region which experienced two fire outbreaks; Buipe SHS and St Charles Boys SHS, both in the Northern Region, and Oppong Memorial SHS in the Ashanti Region.

Some of the affected schools have been temporarily closed for renovation.

Safety officers

Speaking to the Daily Graphic on how to prevent fire in educational institutions, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the GNFS, Divisional Officer II Ellis Robinson Okoe, said employing the services of safety officers to oversee installations and maintenance in schools was very important.

He said not only would they create awareness of safety but they would also help the schools develop safety measures to ensure their facilities were safe from catching fire.

“Most of these schools were built years ago and for that matter, most of their electrical layouts are old and need to be reviewed.

Periodically, they need to check on the electrical and other layouts to see if there are problems.

There should be a qualified professional to do that work, else the slightest problem with the electrical layout can easily develop into a fire outbreak,” he explained.

Illegal connections

Mr Okoe disclosed that most of the fire outbreaks in the schools were caused by illegal electrical connections in the dormitories.

He said the students connected power illegally to charge their phones and other gadgets against the school rules.

Many of the students, he said, used rice cookers and electric heaters to cook food, “meanwhile the heater is not meant for cooking and the rice cooker is not meant for preparing stew.

When you do that, the heated oil serves as fuel and when it comes into contact with any naked flame, it can generate into fire and cause destruction,” he added.

He said if the schools had a safety officer, his duty would include checking on such illegal connections and other activities which were likely to bring about fire outbreaks and prevent them.

Other initiatives

Mr Okoe also suggested the setting up of fire safety clubs in schools to educate the students on the causes of fire outbreaks and preventive measures.

“The trained students will serve as anti-fire groups in the schools and they will go round the school to ensure anything which is likely to trigger a fire outbreak is turned off,” he said.

He also urged the schools to have designated places for ironing, adding that, “Iron is one of the requirements for students who are going to the boarding house.

Imagine a room of 30 students and each one of them has an iron; it means 30 irons will be used each morning before they leave for class.

They are children and it’s likely one may be careless and leave his iron on before leaving for class, and by the time they realise, the whole dormitory would have been burnt down.”

He said if there was a designated place for ironing, that would limit the number of irons used at a particular time and it would be easy to detect when a student carelessly left one on.

The PRO also urged the schools to have improved fire safety equipment such as early fire warning and detective systems, small firefighting equipment, source of water for firefighting and hose reels installed in all their facilities.

That, he said, would ensure that any emerging fire could be detected early and doused before they developed into larger flames.

GNFS interventions

As part of the activities of the GNFS for this year, Mr Okoe said the service would run fire safety audits in the various schools in the country.

After the audit, he explained, the GNFS would come up with a report that would indicate schools which did not meet the fire safety requirement.

Schools which would not meet the required fire safety standard, he said, would be given some time to conform or risk a shutdown.

The PRO mentioned that the GNFS had selected the Kanda Cluster of Schools, St Thomas Acquinas and Accra High School for a pilot project where students, teaching and non-teaching staff would be trained in how to fight fire.

He said the pilot project was likely to be replicated in all regions to ensure that the various schools in the country were safe.