ANALYSIS OF FIRE DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN PORT HARCOURT METROPOLIS, RIVERS STATE/ NIGERIA

Fire emergency has become a recurring phenomenon in school environment. Unlike the developing countries, the availability of preparedness measures in most of the schools in developed countries has tremendously reduced the impact of incidences (U.S. Fire Administration, National Fire Data Centre, 2007). In developing countries, however, the contrary is the case, the lack of or inadequate preparedness measures in most schools, and the increase in fire incidents are raising alarm. The physical, financial and emotional devastation are the common impacts to both developing and developed countries. The closure of schools, damage of school properties, death, injuries and trauma are very common depending on the magnitude and severity of the fire itself (Blackaby, 2007). This study was conducted to analyze fire disaster preparedness among secondary schools in Port Harcourt metropolis. The objective was to established the adequacy of firefighting equipment within the schools premises, to determined the extent to which schools building are constructed in accordance to five safety standard, to establish how secondary schools in the study area have put in place five evacuation/ safety plans   as a measure of fire disaster preparedness, also to determine whether secondary schools train teachers, workers, and student in appropriate response procedure in case of fire incident. Descriptive design method was adopted for this study. A sample size of 132 secondary schools was selected from a total of 661 secondary schools in the study area. The study area was stratified into 5 constituencies and 30% of the total number of schools was selected from each constituency.  Primary and secondary method of data collection was used including questionnaire, interview and observation as well as published data from the state ministry of education and other publish source. The result from the study reveals that fire disaster preparedness among secondary schools in port Harcourt was very inadequate as there was inadequate five fighting equipment, inadequate structures built to fire safety standard, inadequate training for secondary schools stakeholders, as well as inadequate five evacuation plans. On the other hand the t- test result shows that there was a statistically significant difference between public and private schools on the above measured variables at 0.005 levels of significant, 12.180 and 22.142 t, with a mean different of 2.452 and 2.485 for public and private schools respectively. This means that private secondary schools fare better in the provision of some of the above variable.  It was therefore concluded that secondary schools in Port Harcourt metropolis are highly vulnerable to fire disasters and need to take fire safety measures seriously in their daily operation  to prevent fire emergencies. More specifically, government needs to allocate more resources to improve on the fire safety situation in public schools.