There was a commotion at the Apapa Shopping Mall in the Apapa area of Lagos State, as a fire razed Filmhouse Cinema, which is also in the facility.
BizWatch Nigeria gathered that normal activities were ongoing in the late hours of Friday, August 26, 2022, when customers and workers of the shopping mall started to perceive the smell of burning substances.
Concerned with the smell, while some customers quickly moved out of the facility for safety concerns, others joined the mall workers to trace it to where and what was burning.
According to eyewitnesses, the workers and concerned customers were able to discover that the burning smell was coming from the Filmhouse Cinema.
However, upon their discovery, the mall management quickly ordered everyone to evacuate the facility, as it sought help for putting out the fire.
“The fire started around 11pm and based on what I gathered, the fire occurred at the film house’s shop in the mall. Some people said the fire was caused by an electrical fault. They had to evacuate people and called in the fire service. When the fire service officials came, they put everything under control and put the fire out around 2pm. Normal activities have resumed in the mall,” a source was quoted as saying.
Confirming the incident, Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, Margaret Adeseye said no casualty was recorded, adding that the Filmhouse Cinema had been abandoned for a while.
Her words: “The Film House Cinema is not in use. By the time we were alerted and got to the place, we realised that the fire had burnt for quite some time. Almost every abandoned material in there was already burnt to ashes. The mall is a one-storey building and the film house is housed at the upper floor of the one-storey building.’’
