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Lagos pipeline blast site burns through the night
LAGOS
Petroleumworld.com, May 16, 2008Silhouetted against the night sky the shell of the burnt-out excavator continued to belch out flames and acrid black smoke over the site where around 100 people lost there lives in an explosion.
While adjacent districts of Lagos' northern suburbs were alive with frenetic music, candle-lit night markets and ramshackle minibuses embellished with fairy lights, Isola road in Ijegun was eerily quiet.
Attempts to extinguish the blaze had stopped for the night but the street was full of sand still hot underfoot with patches of red embers or spirals of smoke.
The earth-moving Caterpillar excavator brought in for work on the road burst an underground oil pipeline around midday, sparking a massive explosion near a primary school that caused death, injury and destruction on a large scale.
" When the Caterpillar driver came the people here warned him there was a pipeline under the ground. He said he'd be careful, but the minute he started work this happened," said Jimoh Hazan, a rotund middle-aged man ensconced, along with several female relatives, in white plastic chairs in front of the remains of his house.
" People have lost millions of naira and lots of cars," he said, indicating the wreck of a saloon car marooned in sand.
The light of the flames further down the street shows his roof is a write off and the front and yard walls destroyed.
" There was a terrible action -- people came to loot us while we were running away from the fire," Hazan, a football talent scout, told AFP. "The wall is weak -- we have to stay here until tomorrow."
Two doors down at number 26 Rasaki Umar lamented the loss of the roadside grocery store he has kept for the past four years.
" All my clothes were burned ... I'm left with just these knickers," rued Femi Kuye, who occupied a servant's room in one of the burned-out buildings.
Nineteen-year-old Chinedu Eze was writing an examination in the Ijegun Comprehensive Junior High School opposite Hazan's house when the fire started. He recounted how local residents broke down the wall in front of the school, now just blackened stones in the road, to ensure the pupils escaped.
Whether or not all of them did is still the subject of fierce debate in the neighbourhood. Most of the school buildings look intact.
The five or six fire trucks in the vicinity seem to have concentrated their efforts on preventing the fire from reaching a nearby petrol filling station. The whole area round the station resembles a shallow muddy pond.
The last mobile intensive care units were pulling away for the night.
Residents of the blast area noted that one member of parliament, whose name they cannot remember, came to offer condolences. But they were angered over the absence of Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola.
" Our state government are fakes," commented Hazan, complaining that the first state officials showed up a good four hours after the fire started.
Story by Helen Vesperini from AFP
AFP 16 0158 GMT 05 08Copyright© 2008 respective author or news agency. All rights reserved.
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