The fire that gutted the top floor of Standard Bank’s Lilongwe Branch building on Saturday evening caused ‘extensive damage’ to the Information and Technology (IT) department, according to an initial damage assessment.
Lilongwe Police Station spokesperson Kingsley Dandaula, who accompanied senior Standard Bank officials, police detectives and other officers who carried out the initial damage assessment, said the computer room was extensively damaged.
And in a statement issued at midnight on Saturday, Standard Bank (Malawi) chief executive officer Andrew Mashanda said the bank—alongside authorities—are working to establish the inferno’s cause and will issue a public statement as and when all facts of the matter are determined.
Said Mashanda: “The bank wishes to inform its customers and other concerned stakeholders that the situation following the fire is now under control.
“Standard Bank has established that all members of staff are safe and accounted for. During the fire, there was no one present on the side of the building affected by the fire.”
Lilongwe City residents, many of them returning from or going to various leisurely week-end events, were shocked by the rare spectacle of the normally well-secured bank building engulfed by a fierce fire soon after 5pm, according to witnesses.
One witness, a security guard at a shop opposite the fire scene, said he and a few people had earlier commented casually about a trail of smoke they saw around the bank’s top floor windows for about 10 minutes.
As the fire spread across the entire floor, billowing smoke could be seen by people from a distance of several kilometres.
Two fire engines from the Lilongwe City Council (LCC) and another fire engine from the Malawi Defence Force’s Fire, Search and Rescue section of the Lilongwe Airbase, doused the blaze.
“When we saw that we could not easily access the fire base, at the back of the building, we used our vehicles’ projectile ladders to reach the top floor and we gained entry into the building by smashing several windows.
“I think we quelled the raging fire in about 25 minutes’ time, with another half an hour devoted to dousing pockets of the fire,” LCC Fire Department’s sub-officer Raphael Chiwanda explained.
There was a traffic jam on the main Kamuzu Procession Road and other feeder roads and avenues around the fire scene.
Most drivers were engrossed with the blaze and the dramatic fire-fighting efforts, as they caused gridlock by literally dragging their feet on their need to drive on.
