The National Fire Authority is sending out a stern warning to homeowners to stay in the kitchen until your cooking is done especially when there are children and senior citizens in the home. 

The stern warning from the National Fire Authority (NFA) comes in the wake of a fire incident at Bukuya Village, Ba on Tuesday afternoon in which a four-month-old infant became the third fire fatality so far this year.

Nadi Fire Station received a call from the Police Command Centre in Suva at 12.33 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon alerting them to a residential property fire at Bukuya Village. The on-duty crew responded immediately, but because of the distance and rough road conditions, the crew reached the home at 3 p.m. to find that the house owner and villagers had extinguished the fire.

They were then notified of the death.

The two-bedroom concrete house was not insured and had electricity connected to the structure at the time of the fire.  However, it is understood that the fire had started from firewood cooking in the outdoor kitchen area, which was attached to the house.  The windy and dry weather exacerbated the fire, which spread into the house leading to the very unfortunate event.

NFA Chief Executive Officer Puamau Sowane said that this is indeed a very tragic incident that resulted in the unfortunate and unwarranted death of an infant.  Such negligence should never be allowed to occur in a home where the vulnerable are exposed to great risk.

“The rising number of property fire incident calls received is a concern for all of us. Fire impacts people’s lives and destroys years of hard work in a matter of seconds,” he said.

“I urge the public to remain vigilant during this summer to stop the occurrence of any fire in your homes and to get help from the team at your nearest fire station.

“We are always here to help and we urge the public to adhere to all precautionary measures to avoid such incidents from happening.”

In the event of a fire incident, please quickly call 910 and give our firefighters the quickest opportunity to attend to a fire incident.