The LIR building: Photo by Idowu Ogunleye

There was pandemonium this morning as fire guts the office of the Lagos Inland Revenue Service, LIRS, located on the third floor of Good Shepherd building, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.

Hundreds of workers in the four-storey building rushed to vacate the building. The fire is said to have started around 8:45am and razed a room in the LIRS office. Thick smoke was noticed in the building which resulted in panic and exodus of workers out of the building.

Staff of Eko Bank, also using the ground floor of the building abandoned their work and raced out to avert being caught in the fire.

The fire service men came to the scene on time and were able to quench the fire and restricted it to a room. As at 10am, hundreds of workers in the building were still outside until the fire was put out.

General Manager, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA, Michael Akindele told TheNEWS that the Command Centre in Alausa was alerted about the fire at 8:45am, saying. that the fire service and LASEMA responded swiftly. “The fire service got here three minutes after they got the distress call and were able to curtail the fire to only one office,” he said.

He said the cause of the fire could not be ascertained now as investigation was still on but noted that a split air conditioner was noticed to be on fire, which might likely be the cause.