Gidi witnessed yet another fire outbreak yesterday, Thursday, when two fully loaded fuel tankers exploded at a loading bay at Waterworks Road, off Liverpool, Apapa, Lagos.
The owner of the loading bay belonging to Petro-Cargo Limited, Mr. Emmanuel Eze, who spoke through his father, Chief Ikechukwu Eze, said no life as lost. He said, "We have fleets of trucks in the bay and when we load products at the tank farm, the tankers park at the bay pending when they will go to distribute the product.
"What happened was that one of the tanker drivers was supposed to go and distribute the product but unfortunately his truck refused to start and instead of calling an auto-rewire, he decided to do it himself.
“He tried to start the truck manually but he did not know that the fuel pump was leaking. So when he started it, it caught fire and entered the fuel pump and then into the vehicle tank resulting in an outburst of fire."
His story was countered by a senior Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) official, who said evidence on ground did not support the owner's account of what happened. He said, "When we received the distress call, we quickly moved in with other stakeholders and what we found on ground suggests that they were loading fuel from one tanker to another. Investigations are ongoing because we saw a pumping machine on the ground between both tankers and it could have been what triggered the fire."
As the country continues to battle rising cases of fire incidents in the country, the people continue to make things harder for themselves.
Who have we offended? Why this punishment by fire? If the gods are not angry with us, then why do we insist on putting ourselves at great risk?
It doesn't take a genius to know that during the harmattan period, you place your fire-eating, fire-making, and fire-playing skills in the cooler where it belongs, 'cos in the dry air, you have NO advantage.
You can't win!
But no, we think we can win all the time. Personally, I don't wanna play Russian Roulette with fire. . . count me out! I'm a coward like that.
First it was the 'Banger' fireworks fire last year at Lagos Island, then this year, about two weeks ago, at Arepo village, a community in Ogun State, two pipeline fire disasters occurred as a result of the activities of pipeline vandals, taking with them at least 25 lives. Next came the fire outbreak at the MRS Tank farm last week, prompting the call by the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, for the relocation of all tank farms from the Apapa environs. Just when we thought we'd done enough penance, the Shoprite Mall in Alausa Ikeja traded blows with fire and lost.
And now, as if to support the calls by the Lagos State Governor on tank farm relocation, Apapa again witnesses another fire incident.
It's either we're a very careless people, or we've pissed off the man up stairs in ways that even the after-life can't begin to imagine.
Either way, fire is a cleanser. . . . and we're royally *^%(>:@"!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment