It was indeed a sad day for owners of a total filling station in Orile, Lagos as the fuel station suddenly went ablaze last week while properties worth millions of Naira were destroyed in the process
The fire was said to have been triggered off by a 33,000 litre- laden petroleum tanker that was discharging its contents directly into the storage pots of the fuel station.
The truck was said to have loaded its contents from the Total tank farm located in Ijora axis of Apapa, Lagos.
According to an eye witness account, the fire was as a result of leakages from the tanker that arrived to discharge the product and that what really sparked off the fire was the smoke from a nearby hut where some group of boys usually converge to smoke hemp.
A base oil seller at the station who claimed anonymity confirmed to our correspondent that the fire started around 6 pm when the tanker was about discharging the product and it raged on for three hours before the state fire service department arrived and battled to contain the inferno.
Speaking further, he explained that “the truck just arrived as any other tanker would and it was not even up to 10 minutes after the arrival when the fire started and everyone of us had to run for cover, as you can see, there is no means for us to get water to even say we should combat the fire and the station does not have any facility on ground for that, so we had to wait for fire fighters” he said
Apart from the totally- burnt tanker, Shipping Position Weekly correspondent who was at the scene noted that another truck parked nearby was also completely burnt before the late arrival of the fire fighters.
A trailer park that was located beside the ill-fated fuel station in which many petroleum tankers were parked when the fire broke out was thrown into pandemonium and fear that the fire might extend into the facility, but the fire was curtailed before it could get there.
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