MINISTER of State (Aviation), Sen. Hadi Sirika explained
that the vibrations experienced at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport
(MMIA) was not in any way a structural issue at the foremost airport but as a
result of the unlatched doors where the coolers which have just been put into
use are housed.
Minister who flew in from Abuja over allegations that there were
massive vibrations that has affected the structural integrity of the airport,
described the rumours as erroneous and misleading explaining that the
doors were not well-latched and the vibrations happening were directly under
the office Royal Air Maroc and that led to the wrong assumption that something
was wrong.
“Well first and foremost it is wrong and erroneous 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 vibrations 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, the latches were not in place and that gave rise to
the vibration because there are moving parts, there are motors and fans and
other things that are activated and they function the motion to 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.”
The minister further disclosed that the engineering department was
working on the chillers too stating,” We are working on those chillers and in
no distant time the airport will be quite chilled and comfortable for our
passengers.”
On the issue of the power outage that was reported, Sirika said
there was power outage but there were redundancies that are dedicated to
certain critical areas of the airport.
“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 part of the operational aspects of the airport
including the checking-in counter was working perfectly.”
“The terminal building where passengers found themselves were
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 is working
normally.”
‘ Things like this there are unforeseen, power surges are things
we cannot predict but we check that and prevent the surge from affecting us but
it depends on the surge. Going forward, government is working hard to provide
other alternate sources that would be able in the future , even when there is
surge not outages passengers will not notice and the airports will function
normally.”
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