-After Muslim group demanded Justice, as 11 persons now known to have survive the blaze
By William Selmah, wselmah@gmail.com & Mafanta Kromah,mafanta.kromah@gmail.com
Monrovia, Liberia– Foul play has been ruled out of the tragic fire incident that left 27 children and their teachers at a Koranic school killed last month in the Monrovia suburb of Paynesville, says findings from a Liberian government investigation led by the National Fire Service.
According to the report released to Journalists by the Fire Service Director, Alex Dixon on Monday, the September 15, 2019 fire that gutted the Muslim boarding school was caused by electrical shock.
Col. Dixon said there was electricity in the building on the night of the fire, but due to substandard wiring and electrical materials, there was an electrical shock in the ceiling of the building that triggered the fire, which spread to the rest of the building.
Before the investigation report was released, the Coalition of Islamic Schools and Intellectual Forums demanded the government of Liberia to institute an independent investigative committee to probe the cause of the deaths at the United Dawah Qur’anic Memorization Center in Bassa Town community, Red Light.
“We discovered no foul play”, Col. Dixon, NFS Director told a news conference held in Monrovia Monday to release results of their probe.
Electricity to the school building was being supplied by a private provider from a Perkins generator.
The Fire Service boss, who said the report for was validated by their counterparts in the US and Ghana, disclosed that when the fire started the victims went to the back but the building had no exit, only entrance, thus they suffocated and perished.
He said earlier allusion that a petrol bomb was thrown into the building leading to the outbreak of the fire are totally untrue, as far as their investigation, which began on September 16, 2019, has established.
They had gathered some debris from the burnt building for study during their investigation, Col Dixon told newsmen. “No chemical was used, he clarified.
But he said they also found that there was a motorbike containing gasoline parked in the affected area that day and that when the fire broke out that fateful day, all of the children ran in the back of the building which unfortunately had no exit. That motorbike got engulfed by the fire, apparently kindling it.
One of the students from the Africa Islamic Center School, Massa Kamara noted that based on group investigation in the community the facility has no power supply from the Liberia Electricity Corporation and that the school has been operating on generator, but was off before the accident occurred.
She said they were told that there has been conflict on the issue of the land and also there were attempts made to set the building on fire before the disaster, something she said makes them believed that the fire was not an accident, but deliberately done by some people for their own reason.
She indicated that the explanation made to the media by the police spokesperson, Moses Carter that the fire was cause by an electric-suck, though he retracts his statement and the subsequent demolition of the structure for rebuilding they said have given them more reasons to believed that the accident was foul-played.
“Imagine destroying the crime scene without conducting full forensic investigation into the matter is tantamount to tempering with evidence and covering tracks on matter on whose accord,” she lamented.
Kamara called on the President, George Weah to comply with their demands or expert a mass protest from the Muslim community for failure to investigate the cause of the death of the 27 students and a teacher.
“We are asking the leadership to look into this incident with keen attention as all lives matter to a responsible government. If we don’t get accurate outcome of the investigation, we can assure you that there will be a huge mass protests across the length and breadth of the nation,” she disclosed.
However, the Director of the Liberia National Fire Service, Alex K. Dickson said the cause of the fire outbreak was an electric-suck. He said the building had power the night the incident took place and the supplier of power to the facility was one Fredrick K. Brown and that the generator used to provide power was a 30kv generator supplier.
He made the statement during a major press conference on Monday September 30, 2019 in Monrovia. He said copy of the final report has been sent to the Attnony General of Liberia, the Justice Minister and the Acting president of the country.
Dickson affirmed that at about 12:37pm on September 15, 2019, the fire service received a call from the Red Light Police Station that there was a fire outbreak and noted his team headed by Victor Chea reached the scene at 1:02am about.
The Director also maintained that the fire started at the front of the house in the roof of the first room on the right. He said the was a motor bike parked in the corridor of the house with gasoline in it.
According to him, from the investigation the house was build in 1999 and was constructed with a lot of sub-standard materials and the total capacity of the building was 48 persons. He confirmed there were 35 persons in total that lived in the structure and 31 was in the house on the night of the outbreak. Of the 31 person present in the house, four survivors, including the Imam family and 11 others who were not present during the outbreak totaling to 15 survivors.
The Director said it was the four students that notice the fire in the house and two of them run out through the entrance and the other two went to informed their teacher. “The others ran to the last room at the back where there is no exist unware that smoke can take the life of person in 10mins and fire can regenerate in 10mins. He added the two that went to informed them ran through the fire, which is why they got badly burned by the fire,” he said.
Dickson said “the house has only one entrance and no exist”
Moreover, he disclosed that the investigation was sent to the United States and Ghana for reviewing before coming out with the findings.
According to Ousman Kromah from the group demanding investigation, he said they were told by the Imam and some resident that the facility had no power on the night of the incident and that there have been several attacks on the facility by unknown people.
In the aftermath of the incident, government officials, members of the Christian and Islamic communities have been sympathizing with the institution.
President George Manneh Weah who was the first high ranking government officials to visit the site, consoled bereaved families and pledged to rebuild the damaged structure.
The Bassa Town episode has again reignited discussions over the unregulated manner in which mainly private homes are constructed in Liberia’s urban settings with some building in alleys and marshlands.
The National Fire Service official said in the wake of the disaster that if they had even arrived in time to put out the fire, they wouldn’t have probably made it owing to the inaccessibility of the building due to encroachments on alleyways.