No fewer than 150 buildings were destroyed by a midnight fire in the Ebute Metta, Oyingbo area of Lagos State.
Our correspondents gathered that the fire, which started around 2am on Saturday on Ebute, Kano Street, lasted till 12pm as fire-fighters battled to stop the fire.
It was learnt that the fire started from an electrical surge when power was restored to the area about 1am.
When SUNDAY PUNCH visited the scene, residents were making frantic efforts to save their properties.
At least 50 burnt apartments were counted by our correspondents as women and children who were victims, took shade under makeshift shops.
A victim, Olalomi Kazeem, said before he could get to his shop, it was already burnt.
He said, “I don’t stay here. I own a shop and sell soft drinks and food stuffs. I was called about 3am that fire was destroying apartments in the area. By the time I arrived, everything was gone. It will take a long time for us to recover from this disaster. We want the government to assist us.”
Another victim, Saidi Ibrahim, said hoodlums were suspected to have razed the place, adding that residents had been threatened a few weeks before.
Ibrahim said, “This fire is not ordinary. Just two weeks before, hoodlums working for land grabbers have threatened us with eviction, saying the place had been bought.”
Our correspondents gathered that two trucks of the Lagos State Fire Service came to put out the fire.
The Director of the Lagos State Fire Service, Rasak Fadipe, confirmed the Ebute Meta fire, saying over 150 shanties were razed.
“We received the alert around 10.30pm on Friday and we deployed three water trucks from the Ojo, Isolo and Sari Iganmu fire stations there. It’s a shanty area and over 150 structures were destroyed. We could not ascertain the cause of the fire. We put it out about 5.30am on Saturday. There was no casualty,” Fadipe stated.
Meanwhile, fire also gutted the customs training school in Ikeja on Saturday, destroying goods estimated at millions of Naira.
SUNDAY PUNCH gathered that while the ground floor of the building served as a warehouse, the top floor was used as a training school.
Fadipe said a part of the building collapsed due to the intensity of the fire.
The General Manager of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, Michael Akindele, said the prompt response of LASEMA with the support of other rescue agencies limited the damage.
In a statement on Saturday, Akindele promised proper investigation into the cause of the fire.
He said, “We received a report of a fire incident at customs training school, Ikeja. The cause of the fire is still unknown. There was no loss of life or injury sustained at the scene. However, properties worth millions of Naira were lost. While three training classes were completely burnt, the main training complex of about 10 classes was salvaged. Operatives of the agency, the Lagos State Fire Service from Ikeja, Ilupeju and Alausa, with officials of the Nigeria Police Force were on the ground.”
No comments:
Post a Comment