There Was No Earthquake At Murtala Muhammed International Airport

The Minister of State for
Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika,
has allayed fear over a
rumoured eathquake at
the Murtala Muhammed
International Airport
(MMIA).
It was learnt that the vibration
was as a result of unlatched doors
where the coolers which had just
been put into use at the foremost
airport were housed.
According to News Agency of Nigeria
(NAN), that the minister flew in
from Abuja over allegations that
there were massive vibrations that
had affected the structural integrity
of the airport.
He described such reports as
erroneous and misleading.
Sirika said : “Well, first and foremost,
it is wrong and erroneous to say that
the structure of the Murtala
Muhammed Airport is failing and
there was earthquake as reported by
some sections of the media.
“It is not so .What happened is that
there was vibration at the air
handling room of the cooling system.
“This door is a huge metal door that
needs to be locked properly; it was
locked, but it wasn’t latched
properly.”
According to the minister, that gave
rise to the vibration because there
were moving parts, motors, fans and
other things that were activated to
function and create the necessary
cooling system.
“That door responded to the
vibration, and because it wasn’t
latched, it was vibrating and that
vibration was directly under the
counter of Royal Air Maroc, and they
assumed the structure was vibrating
to the point of collapse.
“Once our men were alerted, they
went promptly, identified the problem
which was the door, and latched the
door, and since then, there has been
quiet, so it’s not true,” he said.
The minister said that the
engineering department was working
on the chillers too and would soon
make the airport more comfortable
for users.
He also spoke on the issue of the
power outage that was reported.
“Indeed there was power outage at
the airport; however, we have
dedicated generators to certain areas
of the airport and those generators
were working at the time we lost the
power.
“The airfield lighting,, taxiways were
all working perfectly and most parts
of the operational aspects of the
airport, including the checking-in
counter, were working perfectly.
“The terminal building where
passengers found themselves was
affected, but the outage did not get to
the critical safety operations of the
airport, and even that, it took us a
couple of minutes to identify the
problem and we went for it.
“The generators that would power
that unit had surges and destroyed
part of the activation system of the
generators and took time to restore
but it has been restored now and
since then everything has been
working normally,” he said.
According to him, the government is
working hard to provide other
alternate sources that would be able
to mitigate the impact of such surges
in the future