Management of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria ( FAAN) has clarified that the mistaken incident of smoke at the Terminal 2, Murtala Muhammed International Airport MMIA Lagos on Sunday morning, was not smoke but it was fire pro , a compressed aerosol, that was discharged from fire suppression system installed in the terminal.
The clarification was made on Sunday by the FAAN Director of Airport Operations (DAO), Capt Abdullah Mahmoud while briefing journalists on the incident which many had earlier misrepresented as another fire outbreak at the airport.
Speaking on the development, he explained that when the discharge was noticed, safety protocols were activated to ensure that everybody was evacuated from the building safely.
According to Mahmoud, “Today we have received information that initially it was said that it was a fire and it was kind of like smoke. So we activated our protocol. The first thing that you do in this situation is to make sure that everyone is safe. That is by moving everybody out of the building before now we investigate what happened. So immediately after moving everybody out of the building, the next thing is like after checking, then, we realised that actually is the fire pro that is discharged.
The fire pro system is a kind of like a fire suppression system that is being used mostly around airport and mostly around the equipment areas, generator rooms and stuff like that where water and foam cannot be used to discharge fire. It’s a compressed aerosol. Once
Explaining how the likely cause of the activation of the system, Mahmoud said, Once it is triggered, whether it is by heat or smoke, once the fire detector system detects it, it sends signal to the fire pro and then the fire pro will just discharge. But in this situation. But in this situation, there was no fire, there was no heat, no smoke, nothing. So it just kind of like triggered and discharged.”
The Director of Airport Operation said since none of the conditions that could trigger the activation of the system was in place as at the time it went on, FAAN has commenced investigation into the incident.
He said: “So investigation is still going on. We don’t know whether it is, it came out automatic or somebody mistakenly pressed the manual button that triggers it. So that’s the investigation that is going on.”
