URBAN FIRE DISASTER A CASE STUDY OF PORT HARCOURT
ABSTRACT
Frequent fire disasters in crowded urban business and market structures have become a major concern to Nigerian urban planners. Urban renewal schemes are being initiated to minimize the occurrence of fire accidents and other associated problems by various levels of government in Nigeria. However there is need for a systematic approach and tools predict the performance of potential intervention schemes and policies and also to ensure that the resources deployed for these schemes achieve the highest possible impact. The study was carried out to determine the level of fire safety awareness among workers and the level of fire safety practice in workplaces in Port Harcourt. The primary data were collected by means of questionnaires administration to 210 workers randomly selected from 5 out of 8 Local Government Areas at different workplaces in Port Harcourt with response rate of 100. The workplaces covered in the study are Construction, Health Sector, Education, Exploration and Production, Oil and Gas Servicing and others. A two-stage cluster random sampling method was used to select the study population. Twenty questions were designed as questionnaire parameters; the first ten are to assess the level of fire safety awareness amongst workers while the second ten are to evaluate the fire safety practice at workplaces. Each question (parameter) is of objective format with only one correct answer.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
Fire is a dominant hazard in the workplace. Human factors such as carelessness, negligence and lack of fire safety awareness are some of the leading causes of fire outbreaks. Despite the technological advancement in fire safety, fire remains the leading cause of lives and property loss at commercial and industrial facilities worldwide (Blank, 2004) and fire could lead to the premature winding up of an organisation no matter how big it is.
Management commitment to fire safety is reinforced by having the right people, procedures and systems in place but most times an investigation into a workplace incident reveals a gap between the mainstream business and safety management (Scott, 2010). For instance, there was a fire incident in a plastic factory in Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria in 2002 where many workers were roasted to death at night because the owners of the factory locked the workers in. This high disregard for human life stems from the reality that management of some organizations focus primarily on financial gain and tend to view any investment in safety management as a distraction. Scott (2010) reported that the Financial Times newspaper conducted a global multiindustry survey of 650 executives in the energy, financial, manufacturing, life science, technology and transportation industries. It concluded that many companies are going through changes but their risk management systems are not very effective. More than one third of the executives Int. Res. J. Public Environ. Health considered their biggest challenge as that of aligning risk data to strategies and operations.
The US Marine Municipal Association reports that about 15% of fires result from equipment failure while 85% are caused by factors related to human behavior (RMS, 2004). In 1974 at Flixborough, UK a factory fire claimed 18 lives and injured 38 people. Investigation revealed that plant modification, design, construction and layout of the plant failed to consider the potential for a major disaster happening instantaneously (ICB, 2010).
In January 2003, devastating fires and explosions destroyed a North Carolina Pharmaceutical Plant, 6 lives were lost and 38 workers injured. The investigation revealed that there were inadequacies in hazard assessment, communication and Engineering Management (CSB, 2004). In 2005, a fire incident in Texas City Refinery claimed 15 lives and injured 170 workers. Factors responsible were operator error, equipment risk and staff management failures and working culture at the site (Body, 2010).
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