With the harmattan came cold and freezing breeze from the Sahara, a harbinger of sudden inexplicable fire outbreaks in markets, homes, offices, even on farmsteads and forest reserves. Over the years, in major city hubs, devastating conflagrations almost always attends this period, leaving hapless victims in its trail. Are relevant authorities also hapless in containing these fires? Or are victims necessarily to blame? NICK UWERU asks.
Today, Jaiye Oba, 57, a motor mechanic, knows just how incendiary a butt of cigarette could be. Early in the month, he had flicked away a smouldering butt of what he hoped was his last cigarette for the day on a dry patch of grass near his home. He gave the butt no thought at all until some fifteen minutes later when commotion from outside his home drew him out.
His neigbours in Bala, a remote settlement in the outskirt of Ilorin had spotted the fire on time, luckily for Oba. The dry patch of grass had acted as fuel and catalyst turning the small embers of fire into a raging inferno and steadily making towards Oba’s bungalow.
The fire leaped on the slim plastic pipe that housed wiring in the house and was making straight for the roof. By the time Oba and his neighbours managed to put out the fire, a section of the roof was already gone. Much of the house was spared though. But not so for the farms in the vicinity.
“It was like a bad dream. Even though life was not lost, the damaged caused by that fire is immense,” stated a very sober Oba, earlier in the week. For much of last week, Lagos was on fire, literally speaking. And even so, other parts of the country. Shopping malls and complexes, markets, residential houses and many other edifies came under the rages of inferno that both taxed and baffled fire fighters.
At the end, lives, properties and livelihood were lost. More still are expected going by expert opinion on this phenomenon, at least given that the country is currently witnessing the harmattan period.
What set the tone for this series of misfortune may have been the incident at Okobaba, a slummy settlement of Lagos. A woman had left a burning candle and gone to the bathroom to have a bath. In no time, the fire burnt her room spreading to other shanties.
Residents in the area believe that candle light must have given birth to the fire which led to the conflagration. Also known as a major sawmill hub in Lagos with most of the surrounding houses built with woods, the fire spread quickly.
By the time help came to contain the conflagration, the damage was already done. Four people, including three children, were reported killed in the fire. The public was yet to recover from this disaster when firemen were called to task at three warehouses at Kirikiri, also in Lagos. The storehouses were used to warehouse combustible materials like tire. Though the fire fighters managed to put out the inferno without loss of lives, there were damages to properties worth quite a fortune.
But while the fire was raging, another rescue effort had been opened on another front at Marina Lagos. This time, the fire service men attached to Lagos State were battling to put-out fire a raging inferno at the high-rise buildings at the Eko/Berlin Market area, Lagos.
No clear cut causes were available as to what led to the fire outbreak. But by the time fire and smoke cleared, no fewer than 500 shops have been razed. This particular incident was particularly traumatic. The market is one of the largest of its type in the country.
Though estimate as to the worth of what was burn is not yet out, authorities put the loss at millions of Naira. Director, Lagos State Fire Service, Rasak Fadipe, said the shops were constructed in rows and occupied about two acres of land in the area. Fadipe explained that more than five fire trucks loaded with 10,000 litres of water each, from different divisions of the agency had been deployed on the scene.
Not that the waters were not enough, fire service officers say that accessing the place of conflagration is usually herculean because of structural inhibition occasion by building plans. Most of these shopping complexes were not built with access points in case of fire emergencies.
“Lack of accessibility to the shanties caused serious obstacles to the operations of the fire service and emergency workers,” stated Ibrahim Farinloye, spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, South-West. Not only that. Scenes of fire incidents, especially in a commercial hub, attract hoodlums who look out for opportunities to loot properties. Farinloye, added that fire fighters had difficulty accessing the area due to this form of obstacle.
“A fireman from the state fire service was injured after some urchins dragged the hose with him,” he said. But these were not the only incidents in Lagos. Barely some days after these series of inferno, another section of Balogun Market in Lagos, went up in flames. The market, located behind the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, Marina, Lagos Island, was known for sales of second-hand clothes and shoes.
Despite concerted efforts by the state fire service to confine the fire to the immediate environment, the fire totally razed the wares of traders. Goods estimated at millions of naira were lost. While traders and other victims of the fire incidents in Lagos were licking their wounds, a certain chief Gibson Chukwujindu, director, Gibson Interlink Nigeria Limited, a firm into tailoring and clothing materials, was having his lifetime investment wiped out by fire.
His company was a two storey building at No. 9 Nweje Lane in Odoakpu area Onitsha. By the time the fire which started at 1.30 pm, that fateful day ebbed, goods and property worth over N300 million had been burnt down.
The Chief Operating Officer, Okpoko Fire Service Station, near Onitsha, Mr Ikechukwu Nzegwu, told news men at the time of the incident that only the occupants of the building escaped unhurt but that the entire structure was reduced to ashes.
“We were able to save a three-storey building by its side, belonging to a widow, Mrs Theresa Ekwunife, which had already caught fire as well as other buildings in front of the burnt and collapsed one,’’ Nzegwu said.
But unlike the dispatch with which the fire men in Lagos acted, the Onitsha fire fighters were slow in responding to the call for help by hapless Chukwujindu. According to Ekwunife, some people contacted the Onitsha Main Market Fire Fighting Station but the officers did not come because they complained that their vehicle was grounded. These incidences of fire outbreak are not confined to cities alone.
Rural areas, farmsteads, grazing reserves and entire forestry across the country have been touched by conflagration. Apart from loss of lives, the fires are harbingers of monumental loss of properties, means of livelihood and source of post traumatic experiences that scar victims for life.
Apart from the Okobaba instance where three people died, woman in Warri, Delta State, said to be a sex worker may never recover from the loss of her child to fire which she unintentionally started. As gathered, the woman had left the home late in the night to visit a secret lover.
She had accidentally left a burning candle in the home with her sleeping baby. It was the commotion resulting from trying to put out the fire that brought her back to her house. But by then, things were already