We Rescued 3500 Persons Involved in Various Emergencies in 2024 – DG FEMD

By: Chinedu Echianu

The Acting Director General of the FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMD), Engineer Abdulrahman Mohammed has released a report on the activities of the agency in the outgoing year, saying 3,500 lives were rescued from various emergencies through one hundred and sixty five calls on its 112 emergency toll-free number.

Speaking to newsmen at its headquarters in Abuja, the FEMD boss gave a breakdown of the agency’s search and rescue operations which includes the rescue of 75 lives from various flood disasters and the unfortunate loss of one life to floods at Angwan Hakimi, Orozo, in Abuja Municipal Area Council.

To mitigate the impact of the rains, he said on June 25th, the agency barricaded the slip road at the Galadimawa interchange after which the road was reopened on November 17th 2024 with the completion of remedial work.

Speaking further he said: “one hundred and five persons were rescued from building collapse and there were 4 fatalities. We had incidences at the Prince and Princess estate, Guzape District, Garki 2, Kubwa, and Sabon Lugbe along the Airport Road.

“One thousand two hundred and thirty persons were rescued from various incidents, no life was lost. Some of the incidents occurred at Old Karu market, a fitness center at Gwarinpa, and residential fires.

“There was an attempted suicide on a mast atop Katampe Hill. Through the skillful intervention of FEMD officials and the police, the incident was prevented.

“FEMD responded to the widely reported earth tremor in Mpape, Katampe, and some parts of Maitama Extension where over 2000 residents were traumatized. Our report on the incident was submitted to the Honorable Minster of the FCT.

He said FEMD, in collaboration with the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA distributed food items to 200 persons living with disability in the FCT in 2024 and thereby urged philanthropic organisations who are interested in distributing palliatives to needy FCT residents to do so in collaboration with FEMD, adding that the agency has well trained staff who can coordinate large crowds to forestall breakdown of order as was witnessed at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama during a palliatives distribution program.

The Acting DG of FEMD said the agency was able to achieve remarkable success in 2024 despite major challenges hampering it’s activities such as obsolete equipment, limited office space, security issues on the field and inadequate funding.

He called for enhanced funding for the Agency especially as it plans to deploy technology in the management of disasters in 2025;
“these include Integration of technologies using lower orbit satellite to track real images and analytical data to enhance risk assessment and monitoring capabilities in the FCT.

“This will not only enhance efficiency, effectiveness and decision making, but greatly reduce our response time. FEMD in the coming year will establish effective channels for sharing information and best practices, in addition to setting up secure data storage solutions. We intend to Increase focus on risk assessment for the city center to increase focus on risk assessment to mitigate potential disasters and close collaboration with area councils and traditional institutions to effectively tackle emergency situation at the rural areas.” he said.