From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
An outbreak of inferno in the studio area of the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) on Wednesday wreaked monumental havoc to both the radio and television arms of the corporation.
A visit to the corporation by Daily Sun revealed that the fire outbreak started in the Recording Studio and spread to other essential areas. It was said to have been begun shortly fter power supply was restored to the corporation.
Multimillion naira quipment, including television cameras, microphones cables ad teleprompters were destroyed by the inferno, which started in the afternoon. It was observed that both the radio and television arms of the corporation have gone off the air. The entire corporation was also in total blackout as at Wednesday evening.
But for the timely arrival of the officials of Oyo State Fire Service, the fire outbreak would have been more devastating. The fire brigades were about to put off the fire on time.
But the management team of BCOS on ground said the assessment of the burnt equipment was ongoing adding that the details of the affected equipment would be made known on Thursday.
They, however, appealed to the Oyo State Government, under the leadership of Governor Seyi Makinde, to come to their rescue.
The Excutive Chairman of BCOS, Prince Dotun Oyelade, said the incident occured barely some minutes to the airing of a live Sports programme, saying: “Just about when we are about to start another live TV sports programme, we observed that IBDC Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company), after the usual days of being inactive, suddenly came on and it went off almost immediately.
“However, barely one minute later, it came back and there was a surge. It was a big surge and it affected the electrical system in one of our studio.
“Our engineers moved in immediately to see what could be done. But you know the ambience of a broadcast studio is peculiar to the extent that the partitioning is acoustic, that is thick foams, sandwitching thick woods in order to forestall audio interference.
“The smoke could not escape. We moved into action immediately because we have residential fire extinguishers, which are up to 20. We deployed them immediately l. But the smoke was choky, lethal and very dangerous
“We could do very little to quench the fire, hence we solicited the assistance of the Nigeria Airforce Base Fire unit, Oyo State and Federal government fire services to mitigate the disaster.
“As I talk to you now, it is difficult to give a scientific assessment of the damage. Before we can engage in that, it will have to be tomorrow’
The Chairman of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Oyo State Council, who led his executive member on a visit to BCOS described the fire outbreak as shocking, devastating and unfortunate.
“We thanked God that no life was lost. But equipment, expensive ones were destroyed. We call on Governor Seyi Makinde and the statement to come to th aid of BCOS.”
