On Friday, fire destroyed the Film House Theater at the Apapa Shopping Center in Apapa, Lagos State.
When shoppers and employees began to notice the scent of burning materials, news crews observed that routine operations were still taking place in the mall.
It was discovered that interested mall visitors and emergency personnel located the abandoned movie theatre where the burning scent was coming from.
Following the discovery, a brief suspension of commercial operations in the mall was mandated, and patrons and employees were asked to leave the structure.
According to a source in one of the mall's stores who spoke with The Punch, the fire began about 11am and that it immediately caused alarm among both consumers and staff.
He added that no lives were lost in the incident, though, and that it required the help of firefighters to put the fire out.
The source said, “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 needed to evacuate everyone, so they phoned the fire department. Around 2 pm, the time the fire department personnel arrived, they brought everything under control and extinguished the fire. The mall is now again operating normally."
When asked about the event, Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service Director Margaret Adeseye claimed it took a while for people to realise the movie theatre was on fire because it had been abandoned.
She said, “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.’’
“We are still trying to unravel the possible cause. We got the fire alert around 11.50am and the fire was extinguished around 2pm. No life or injury was recorded,” Adeseye added.