There was an idiom; “The safety of your
home” to suggest that the home was meant to be safe. Not anymore. Build beside
an expressway and a fuel truck might skid off nearby; build in the middle of
nowhere and stray bullets might rain in through your roof. And there are several of these incidences. So,
who’s shooting these bullets? What’s going on and how do we secure ourselves?
The first I heard of stray bullet in a
home was in 2014, listening to my friend Amaka Dehniece’s testimony. On an
evening, she’d felt a sudden inward nudge to take her from one room to her
bedroom. Shortly after moving the kid, there was a loud bang. A bullet had
penetrated their roof and smashed into the very spot the boy laid in few moments
earlier.
I became more concerned when recently a distant
friend Abas Brave posted his own experience on my Facebook timeline. A bullet
had dropped into his family home. It landed on a busy part of the house,
luckily, when nobody happened to pass that way.
People
Got Killed
Fortunately, I haven’t had any
casualties nearby. But there are countless accounts of people who either were injured
or who got killed by a stray bullet in the safety of their homes.
In Ghana, a nine year old boy, Kwasi
Opare Kwakye narrowly missed being hit by a stray bullet which came into his
parents’ living room through the roof narrowly missed him, according to his
mother. He was sitting on the exact spot where the bullet hit and created a
small hole only moments before the incidence. She instructed the boy to get up
from the floor and no sooner had he done that than the mysterious bullet came
through the roof, the ceiling and hit at the spot where he was sitting, the
perplexed mother of two told Luv FM’s Erastus Asare Donkor.
Darryl McNair wasn’t as fortunate. On his 58th
birthday, a stray bullet struck him while he sat at his PC playing Solitaire in
his home in New Haven, Connecticut.
In January
2010, Four-year-old Marquel Peters was hit while in a church service, by a
falling bullet fired two miles away during New Year
celebrations. Sitting next to his parents attending a New Year church service,
in Atlanta, US, the toddler suddenly collapsed at the feet of his parents bleeding
from the head. It was only as doctors
tried to save his life that they realized what had happened.
He died just 20 minutes into the New
Year.
Wikipedia documents a long list of tragedies
from falling stray bullets fired in celebration.
These tragic stories have raised
questions that drove me to make deeper quests.
Firstly, I contacted an old colleague of mine, who today is a senior
police officer and a weapons authority. He’s based in Port Harcourt; he’s an
Assistant Superintendent of Police, and he agreed to contribute to this quest, but
asked not to be named as he isn’t authorized to speak publicly on the subject.
I asked: “where do these bullets originate
from, and why do they breach the safety of our homes?”
He answered; “Firstly, a bullet can’t be
aimed at a person or a house through the roof. It doesn’t make sense. A bullet
can come in through the roof if it is fired into the air and, at the point of return;
it lands with its tip pointing down. It can then pass through the roof if the
roof is weak or if it does not encounter any wood, steel or some other truss in
the roof carcass”.
Now, I make out that we may need to
start building bullet proof roofs and building exteriors. I called a practicing
architect, also Port Harcourt based, to ask his opinion on the issue. Due to
professional restrictions on advertisement, he also asked not to be named.
Other
Missiles To Worry About
“Bullets are not the only harmful objects
that can penetrate a home through the roof. Stones, wood pieces and other small
missiles flying at high velocity, and even hail stones must be taken into
consideration”, he says. We don’t have snow in Nigeria, which poses a risk in
some other parts of the world; and incidences of hail are extremely rare. And then he walks me through architectural
solutions that home builders can take advantage of:
“You can choose to insulate your
ceiling. The insulation serves two purposes. Primarily, it helps maintain
moderate temperature within the home; but the material can help slow down the
velocity of any intruder object. Styrofoam is a common insulator that can be
used.
Styrofoam is a trade name for a
hydrocarbon material known as Polysterene Foam. It contains 98% air and is made
by Dow Chemical Company. Its uses range from making disposable coffee cups,
coolers and flasks, to packaging fragile appliances for shipment.
He also believes that Iron Trusses,
rather than wood, are a good idea too. But, according to him, they are usually
1.2 meters apart up there in the roof carcass, significantly reducing the
chances of stopping such marauding objects.
Perhaps the most cheering recommendation
of his’ is the possibility of coating roofing sheets. Most houses in Nigeria
and Sub-Saharan Africa are roofed with corrugated zinc/steel materials. While this
is cheap, it is also thin enough for a missile to perforate without losing much
of its momentum.
“You can coat your zinc roofing sheets
with concrete. It is relatively expensive, but for its advantages, it is highly
recommended.” The advantage of this coating
is that the concrete will increase the resistance of the roof sheets, while not
taking away established benefits of the material including reflecting heat and
thunder.
What
Can Individuals Do
Gun possession in Nigeria is
theoretically more restricted than in most countries of the World. But practically
speaking, one can safely speculate that thousands of above-the-law individuals
possess assault weapons; mostly for self-security, but also for criminal reasons.
Howbeit, Nigerian law enforcement is always on alert following unidentified
gunshots. What is left to worry mostly
is Celebratory gunfire – the practice of celebrating by firing shots into the
air. Especially in the US, there is considerable number of casualties from
falling bullets shot along with fireworks at Christmas and in New Year celebrations.
In many countries it is allowed, but in
Nigeria it is in between illegal and permissible. If the gun owner owns a
license, he may be excused by the police officer, but cautioned. Otherwise, he’s
in trouble. The police themselves do shoot into the air to disperse hostile
crowds, scare away robbers, or maybe just celebrate.
Every bullet shot into the air must
return to the ground. It is suggested that if it is shot vertically into the
air, it may be less dangerous than at a gradient. Forensicoutreach.com quote a
California sheriff of asserting that; “A bullet fired into the air can return
to earth at speeds between 300 and 700 feet per second, fast enough to pierce a
person’s skull”. So, shooting in excitement, or for whatever other reason, may
end up taking another person’s life.
What
Can Government Do?
Shooting in the air for celebration is
irresponsible in a truly civil society. Consider that even when a falling
bullet has lost most of its momentum, if it penetrates soft parts of the body,
it can penetrate and damage sensitive internal organs.
It is worth noting that these bullets do
not only break in through the roof, but also can go through the windows and
other openings in the walls.
The government should therefore ban the
shooting of live ammunition into the air for whatever reason. Police, who need
to do so, may be provided with rubber bullets. Regulations on the use of
fireworks during festivities should also be enforced with more stringency.
The police officer friend did advise
however that the best reaction to finding a bullet in your home is to leave it
where you found it and report to the nearest police station. Investigations
will commence and the source will be identified. If someone is hit, of course,
quick first aid must be administered depending on the severity of the injury.
For the elderly and retirees, there is
Homecare service provided by networks of doctors, a popular one being that by
Nova Africa doctors on Call (Novadoc), for Nigeria residents. Subscribing for
such services may come in handy on days of such emergencies as the stray bullet
in a home situation.
Uduak Umo is a Chartered PR Consultant and Public Interest Researcher.
Find me on Twitter on @umo2013
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