There was pandemonium in idi-oro, Mushin area of Lagos State on Wednesday when a tanker loaded with Petrol exploded at a Filling Station in the area.
The fire was said to have spread to an adjoining three-storey building, burning down the property.
It was gathered that the fire started around 1pm when the tanker, laden with 33,000 litres of petrol, was discharging its content at the filling station on Agege Motor Road.
The fire also destroyed property worth millions of naira and rendered many occupants of the building homeless.
Some residents tried in vain to salvage their property while firefighters battled the inferno.
A tenant, Sowemimo Oluwaseyi, blamed the filling station for the incident.
He said, “I was at work when my brother called me that fire from Mobil gutted our house. The filling station does a lot of things that we don’t like. We complained to the former DPO at the Alakara Police Station and he said things would be done properly, but this new DPO does not care.
This particular tanker that caused this fire today (Wednesday) has been there since yesterday. What was it doing there? It ought to have discharged its content and leave the premises. We have been complaining about this act for more than five years, but nobody did anything.
“We were unable to salvage anything. The clothes on me now are what I have left; even my mum, who is a caterer, her property is in the building and we could not salvage anything. All her plates, coolers, burners, everything is gone. Where do we start from?
“I recently bought some appliances because I was planning to move out of this place. But now, everything is gone. Even all my credentials are gone.”
Among the emergency responders at the scene were the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, National Emergency Management Agency, Lagos State Fire Service, Federal Fire Service, University of Lagos Fire Service, Disaster Management Unit of the Lagos State Police Command, Federal Road Safety Corps and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
The filling station was cordoned off by the Lagos State Safety Commission.
The management of the Mobil Filling Station, in a statement on Wednesday, said it was investigating the cause of the incident, adding that measures would be put in place to forestall a recurrence.
The statement read, “11 Plc management (operator of Mobil Service Station) would like to bring to the attention of the general public that there was a fire incident at one of our retail service stations (filling station) at Idi-Oro, Mushin, this afternoon during the product discharge operation.
PUNCH