There was tension in Port Harcourt on Friday as residents
of the Rivers State capital witnessed a cocktail of fire incidents in four
different locations.
While residents around Abuloma Jetty
were jolted by the explosion of a vessel that claimed the lives of at least 30
persons, workers of Rivers State Newspaper Corporation lost property worth
millions of naira as fire gutted the second floor of The Tide Newspaper building located on Ikwerre
Road.
Also, the Engineering Department of a
Port Harcourt-based radio station, Rhythm
FM, was razed by an
early morning fire that had made the station to go off air.
At Eneka, operatives of the Joint
Military Task Force codenamed ‘Operation Pulo Shield’ set fire to five tankers
loaded with illegally refined oil, completing the blend of fire incidents in
Port Harcourt in a day.
On the explosion of a vessel at the
Abuloma Jetty, it was gathered that the occupants of the ship, excluding three
persons who escaped, were dead.
An eyewitness, who identified himself
as Gideon, told SATURDAY
PUNCH that
members of the crew, some ladies suspected to be students of tertiary
institutions in Port Harcourt, were among those who lost their lives in the
explosion.
The ladies, according to Gideon, were
on their way to spend the weekend with their friends and relatives offshore
before they met their untimely death.
A resident of Abuloma, Mr. Jame
Israel, who witnessed the incident, said the blast occurred about 9.30 am as a
result of the maintenance work being carried out in the vessel by welders.
“The welders were trying to seal an
opening to block a leakage on the deck of the vessel’s fuel tank and in the
process, the vessel exploded. The welders died, but we cannot ascertain how
many people died inside the vessel,” Israel added.
Another eyewitness, who identified
himself as Ifeanyi, said the explosion threw one of the welders above the
vessel before he (welder) landed into the fire that sent a heavy smoke into the
air.
“I saw it; the impact of the
explosion pushed one of the person suspected to be the welder very high before
he landed back into the fire. The explosion caused the buildings around this
place to vibrate.
“When we heard the sound, we
initially thought it was a bomb blast from a terrorist group. But we later
learnt that the explosion occurred as a result of the welding work being done
in the ship,” Ifeanyi said.
The Rivers State Commander of the
Federal Road Safety Commission, Kayode Olagunju, said, “An oil vessel around
9.45 hours caught fire and exploded at the Abuloma Waterfront in Port Harcourt.
“The fire is still restricted to
water areas. FRSC, NEMA, police, fire service and other rescue agencies are on
the ground. Casualty figure is not yet known. We shall keep you posted.”
The state Coordinator of the National
Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Emenike Umesi, said the agency did not get any
casualty figure.
Umesi told SATURDAY PUNCH that it was not certain if
people were trapped in the vessel, promising that figures of casualties would
soon be released.
At The Tide office, the editor of the paper, Mr.
Soye Jamabo, said fire gutted the second floor of the building about 2 am,
destroying vital documents.
Jamabo added that fire fighters
across the road tried to put out the fire to no avail as their pipe was not
long enough to get to the second floor of the building.
Similarly, the state Chairman of the
Nigeria Union of Journalists, Mr. Okpaka Dokubo, explained that the state-owned
fire service officials were helpless as their equipment failed them at a
critical time.
“The fire fighters came, but their
equipment were ineffective. Their water pipe could not go beyond the first
floor of the building. If not for the intervention of fire fighters from Total,
the entire building would have been razed,” Okpaka stated.
The state Commissioner for
Information and Communication, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, who visited Tide, was
said to have directed workers to go home pending when they would get instructions
from the government.
In another development, JTF
operatives had set five tankers loaded with suspected illegally refined oil on
fire in Atali on Rumuokwurusi-Igwuruta Road.
The JTF troop had impounded the five
tankers within the area in the night and had directed that they should be
driven to the bush where they were set ablaze.
It was gathered that the JTF ignored
entreaties from residents that buildings around the area could be affected by
the fire.
Spokesperson for the JTF, Operation
Pulo Shield, Capt. Sunday Samuel, said the tankers were involved in illegal
bunkering, adding that the mandate of the JTF was to destroy products seized
from illegal bunkerers.
Samuel stated that six persons were arrested in the
process of impounding the tankers, adding that the suspects would soon be
handed over to appropriate authorities for further investigation and
prosecution