An Aba based private television station; Popular Broadcasting Service (PBS) was on Thursday destroyed by fire.
A staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity account hinted that the station lost its studio, control room and recording suite to the inferno.
She added that property worth over N200million was lost in the incident, stressing that the development has dealt a big blow to the fledging establishment.
John Nweke who lives near the station said he woke up to a commotion in the neighbourhood. On learning that the station was on fire, he joined rescue efforts even as they could barely save anything due to the intensity of the fire.
He said the fire was a result of power surge from the national grid grid.
Managing Director of the station, Mr. Armand Odogwu, who was almost close to tears spoke to newsmen, “I live in one of the self- contain apartment in the compound. At exactly 1.10am, there was a surge and the electric bulb in my room went red, almost to a bursting point. I had a crack outside. I don’t know if I will call it lightning. At this point I rushed out with the generating set attendant and there was observable difference in what was happening.
“At that point in time we were using the 10 KVA generating set and there was no light round the compound. We all entered our rooms and some minutes later I perceived some fumes like burnt plastic. When I came out the second time, the entire roof was on fire.”
Odogwu said that when he raised alarm, the staff and neighbours joined them in rescue efforts, adding that when the fire service team arrived around 2am the entire live studio, control room, music recording studio, and the disc duplicating section, among others, had been lost.
He lamented that they were only able to recover two video cameras. “If you look around, you will discover that three- quarter of the building was gutted by the fire.
Pointblanknews.com gathered that only the marketing and accounts departments were not affected by the incident.
Odogwu appealed to the government and well meaning individuals to come to their aid to enable them come back on air as the situation would expose them to the option of seeking for bank loans to fix the station.
He also called on the federal government to improve the power sector.
‘”We are living on the promises of the powers- that- be that very soon we will have steady power supply. Let me hope that it will be a normal power supply and not in jerks like what happens here.”