“We saw hell” – horrified eyewitnesses describe day Lagos bus stop “grew wings of fire”
It was 5pm; the evening rush hour had just began. Workers were returning home amidst shouts from conductors and drivers indicating the destinations of yellow buses. Traders at Cele Odo-Eran market, near Itire area of Lagos, were hoping to make more sales before they called it a day. Drivers at a nearby taxi park looked at their yellow cabs waiting for the next passenger.
The Oshodi-Apapa expressway was busy conducting speeding vehicles in both directions. On the service lane inward Oshodi, a huge truck was reversing into a factory where all kinds of plastic items are manufactured.
And a loaded fuel tanker was dangerously heading in, on the express lane, from Sanya bus stop.
“I drove past the tanker at Sanya bus stop,” Cab driver Tunde Adeolu, perhaps one of the first persons who had a gut feeling something was wrong, told NewsroomNG.
“The tanker driver seemed out of control. I didn’t know what was wrong but I knew something was not right. He was moving too fast and didn’t seem like he could slow down.”
Tunde got to Cele bus stop before the tanker driver. The cab man was about settling down when he heard a loud bang.
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It was initially reported the tanker, bearing 33,000 litres of petrol, exploded after losing control and ramming into a stationary truck. Eyewitnesses tell a different story.
A security man at the plastic factory said he saw it happen.
“A truck was trying to reverse into our company,” he began.
“All of a sudden, I saw a speeding tanker truck veering off the middle of the highway on two occasion with its side hitting the road demarcation which wouldn’t let it somersault into the opposing lane.
“When it hit the demarcation a second time, it flew into the air, landed on its sides and slid towards the gutter separating it from the service lane.
“As it slid, I saw sparks caused by the contact between the metallic tank and the hard ground. The next thing I heard and saw were a loud sound and lots of fire”.
A towing vehicle owner told our corresponded one of the tyres of the tanker, the one at the driver’s side burst before the accident happened.
“I think the driver marched the brakes after the tyre burst. It think that was the moment the tanker fell to the side of the road,” Raheem said.
Moments after the explosion, fuel began pouring into the highway drainage. The highly inflammable liquid traveled, in the drainage, at least 35 meters back from the spot where the burning tanker fell, and about 120 meters forward towards the taxi cab and the market at the bus stop.
And so did the flames which sent everyone running for dear lives.
The truck driver trying to reverse into the plastic factory now had his truck some 30 meters behind the fallen tanker. He jumped out of the driver’s seat before the flames caught up with his mammoth vehicle.
By now, the men seated at the front of the tanker were dead — two of them. Some said there were three.
According to eyewitnesses, there was fire everywhere. At the taxi park, Mr Gbele was trying to move his cab but the engine wouldn’t start. The taxi is now history but the driver escaped with his life and his colleagues told our correspondent whoever owned the fuel tanker should compensate Mr Gbele.
Petrol kept pouring into gutters near the market. Every flow so came with eager flames Igbo traders selling clothes under the bridge near the market had to flee. There was fire and black smoke. No one could see.
Goods were burnt to ashes; some were stolen by daredevil thugs.
“Where do we start from?” one of the traders asked our correspondent who couldn’t reply the young man in whose eyes he saw so much pain.
Itunu was praying in a church across a canal in the area when she saw the thick bellows of smoke. She ran to the market to help her mother park her goods to safety. Fire destroyed the spot where they displayed their wares. That’s the only thing they lost, she said.
The other female traders weren’t so fortunate. One woman just bought three cartons of fish she wanted to resell in bits. The fire fried them all.
“We saw hell,” Itunu said. “Some people even came here to steal goods from these petty traders. Where is our human kindness?
“Some helped traders safeguard their goods but wouldn’t release the goods without demanding and collecting money from poor market women,” Itunu said, shaking her head in disbelief.
It could have been worse.
Another petrol tanker was trying to offload fuel at a petrol station on the other side of the road when the accident happened. With the flames now “everywhere”, the tanker was getting hot, a man told us.
The filling station’s workers had to continually pour water and a cooling agent on the body of the tanker while the fiery chaos lasted.
Cooking gas sellers at a nearby bank hurriedly move their cylinders to safety as the flames threatened. Fire was oozing out of the drainage now filled with petrol.
“It was as if the entire bus stop had wings made from fire,” Raheem said. “I thought it would fly us all into hell.”
The truck caught in the flames behind the fallen tanker threatened to pass the torch unto the factory where there were loads of fire-friendly substances. It could have succeeded had firefighters arrived later than they did.
“To be honest, the fire brigade came late but they redeemed themselves by doing a great job,” Raheem said.
“They faced the truck and isolated its fire from the factory,” a security man at the factory said. “If they hadn’t, things would have been worse.”
Raheem added: “Only one fire truck came at first before others joined in. I later counted at least six fire trucks.”
Another eyewitness who wouldn’t be identified said he counted 15. Director, Lagos State Fire Service, Rasak Fadipe said only six were mobilised.
“The firefighters didn’t leave this place until 2am the next day. I was with them throughout,” another eyewitness said.
After extinguishing the flames, rescue workers tried moving the tanker but couldn’t as there was still fuel inside it. So they left it there.
When our correspondent visited the place on Tuesday, he saw people gathered around the tanker wreckage.
“See,” a man told our correspondent. “Some of these people just came to see the tanker. Others are here to find ways of tapping the remaining fuel in the tank. That can lead to another disaster if no one stops them”.
“We’re still regretting that we couldn’t save those who died yesterday because the tanker exploded almost immediately after it fell. We don’t want others to die.”
He said the drainage along the express saved lives.
“If there was no drainage, the fuel would have flooded the express and cars would have been burnt. More people would have lost their lives.”
Normalcy had returned to Cele bus stop after the Monday accident. But those who lost wares to the flames and to thieving hoodlums say things would never become “normal” until we get back on our feet.
“That will eventually happen but it will be hard most people,” Itunu said.
WATCH: Lagos bus stop on fire
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