The Federal Capital Territory Administration FCTA said it has concluded plans to use drones to monitor this year’s climatic outlook and flood in order to get real time data that could enhance the safety of residents.

Director General, FCT Emergency Management Agency FEMA, Abbas Idriss who disclosed this at a news conference Wednesday in Abuja added that the agency is also working to reduce its response time.

“Going forward, FEMA intends to deploy more technology in disaster management to further reduce the response time from 5 to 3 minutes. We intend to use drones particularly during flood and other climatic predictions.

We also intend to ensure prompt dissemination of year 2022 NIMET and NIHSA flood outlook with a view to guiding farming activities and safety of lives and property”, he stated.

According to him, FEMA also saved sa goods and property estimated at over N1.26 billion from market fire outbreaks between January and December 2021.

He added that a total of 3, 715 lives were saved in various rescue operations within the same period.

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Giving further breakdown of the activities of the agency, 2,025 lives were saved from flooding, with the highest figure of 802 coming from the Trademore Estate flood incident in Lugbe, while five lives were lost to flooding in the area.

He added that FEMA rescued 1, 444 persons from various fire rescue operations including that of the Ebeano Super Market fire where 74 persons were rescued, the Kugbo furniture market fire with 102 lives saved and 300 lives from the Gwarinpa old tipper garage fire.

According to him, the agency recovered 26 vehicles during the rescue operations at Trademore while183 houses were submerged during the period under review.

He revealed that the Agency recorded an increase in the use of its112 toll-free emergency number, as it received 173 distress calls in 2021, as against 153 in 2020.

“Other rescue operations attended to in 2021 included incidents of collapsed buildings, where we were able to rescue 17 persons; we however lost 2 lives.

“Drowning incidents claimed one life while we rescued 7 persons from various rivers. We recorded 2 incidents of gas explosion, thankfully no lives were lost. We also lost 7 lives to Military Air crash”, he said.

Idriss added that about 1,128 Internally Displaced School children were also enrolled across FCT LEA Primary schools for the 2019/ 2020 session.