When Onitsha went up in flames

In the commercial city of Onitsha, the past few weeks have been particularly traumatic for residents as mysterious infernos razed down buildings and in­vestments running into millions of naira.
Helpless residents could only watch from a far distance, as buildings got totally razed.
Even as residents were yet to come to terms with the fire at Ogboli Road by Old Cemetery Road, which destroyed a two-storey building and consumed everything in it, another incident soon compounded their woes.
The puzzle of the Ogboli fire incident, according to Emeka Nwali, still remains that till date, the cause of the inferno is yet to be established, as residents of the area were kept to their feet by the raging inferno that destroyed property and goods worth millions of naira.
As the people were watching the inferno , the only thing that could escape from the mouth of one of the victims was, “God, so this is how I will be sent back to the village?”
One of the victims of the inferno who lost all his merchandise had stocked his shop with new goods few days before the incident, it was learnt. Everything had gone up in flames. It was gathered that a trailer-load of motorcycles and parts was offloaded in the shop the day before the inferno.
One of the eyewitnesses said the fire started by 5pm on the fateful day, adding that the true cause of the fire was not yet established. He suggested, though, that it could not be unconnected with electrical fault.
He said the fire started from the last floor of the two-storey building and later escalated to the rest of the building that had warehouses on the ground floor.
“It is a two-storey building. The ground floor is used as warehouses and all the shops were highly stocked with various goods before the incident. One of the victims just brought his goods a day before the incident. And now, look at the whole thing. The money is gone, the goods are gone just within a twinkle of an eye,” he said.
Other victims of the incident, Oge and Chima narrated their ordeals and disclosed that all they had ever laboured for were destroyed by the inferno, disclosing that there was not even a pin that was saved from their apartments as the incident was not anticipated.
“We left our apartments in the morning to go and hustle for the day’s food and we never anticipated that such calamity could befall us. When I received a call that our house was on fire, I tried to make my way through the tough traffic to know if I could get here on time, at least save one or two things from my room. But I wasn’t that lucky as I came to discover that the fire had entered into my own room and razed everything,” he said.
Just 24 hours after the Ogboli fire disaster, the entire Nkpor junction went up in flames again following a fierce fire incident at a filling station that razed the filling station, burning buildings and vehicles.
At the time that the Ogboli incident happened, the Nkpor incident was even fiercer and erupted at the same time as the former. Traders and residents of the city watched as the filling station, one of the biggest filling stations in the neighbourhood go up in flames.
The fire incident was made worse by the fact that there was no help from anywhere. The State Fire Service, Okpoko could not offer any help, as its personnel were not on ground to salvage the situation.
It was even worse that the incident occurred in a filling station that was housing a loaded fuel tanker, which was at the station to discharge its contents suspected to be Premium Motor Spirit, PMS or fuel.
It was gathered that trouble started while the tanker was at the filling station to discharge its products even as some of the attendants at the station were selling fuel.
One of the eyewitnesses, Chinyere, a roadside hawker, told our reporter that a motorcycle operator who had just bought from the station was trying to start his motorcycle when the plug caught fire. The fire later spread to the nozzle of the fuel tanker discharging fuel into the underground tanks and the entire place went up in flames.
“What we heard was a terrifying sound that was followed by dark smoke before the fire started raging. Some of us, especially women selling fruits and other things in front of the station, fled for our dear lives. Before the station was completely consumed, there was a neat car belonging to one of the staff of the filling station that was burnt alongside the tanker. The driver and pump attendants escaped death by the whiskers,” she said.
The fire lasted from 5pm till very late in the night without any help in sight.
The Anambra State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Uche Eze couldn’t speak on the incident. He was said to be outside the state at the time of filing this report.
Written by Emmanuel Uzor for the Sun