How petroleum explosion killed one, burnt 12 others

The explosion as gathered by Sunday Trust occurred when around 8pm, a black marketer called Awwalu, the son of the owner of the house, was using the light from his handset to see while he tried to fetch fuel in a smaller jerry can. In the process, however, the product exploded thereby setting him and […]

The explosion as gathered by Sunday Trust occurred when around 8pm, a black marketer called Awwalu, the son of the owner of the house, was using the light from his handset to see while he tried to fetch fuel in a smaller jerry can. In the process, however, the product exploded thereby setting him and the entire family on a fire.

Malama Amina, a woman whose children and grandchildren were among the victims, said the explosion occurred at a time when the children had closed from the evening Islamiyya school in their neighbourhood and had just returned home. She stated that when the fuel exploded and the fire started, some of the children ran out of the yard while others went into the house in search of a hideout. “The children just came back from the Islamiyya school around 8 in the evening when the explosion occurred. Frightened by the blazing fire, some of them went back to where they were coming while others ran into the house and sought refuge in their rooms,” she said.

Amina added that when the explosion occurred, neighbours ran to the Jakara outpost of the Kano State Fire Service but they were told the service van had no enough water to put out the fire. According to her, it was the effort of neighbours and some firemen from a different outpost that brought the fire under control.

She said before the fire was brought under control, the entire house got razed and the family’s grandmother who was lying ill in her room died while the fire was still raging. “As you can see, all the four rooms in the house got burnt and the women and children that took refuge in those rooms got burnt. An old woman who was over 100 years old lying on her sick bed was also burnt. We took her to the hospital but she died immediately after we got there,” she said.

She further added that about 12 people were also affected. “Twelve people were affected. They included the black marketer himself, his younger brother, a woman with her children and my own children and grandchildren. Apart from the black marketer and his brother, all the other victims are females,” she said.

She said the condition of those in the hospital was critical because the whole parts of their skins got peeled off. “Their condition is critical. You cannot look at them twice, their skin has peeled off leaving the meat outside and most of them cannot even talk because of their condition.”

According to her, when they finally brought the fire under control, the victims were wrapped in mats and carried to the hospital where they were currently on admission. The condition of the black marketer is also critical because he could not even answer questions posed to him by this reporter. He is a teenage boy who had been in the business for some years, as disclosed by a family source.

Sunday Trust learnt that all efforts made by the father to stop him from bringing the petrol to the house failed. “His father did his best to stop him from bringing the petrol into the house but he refused. Even when other people cautioned him, he would always say they were doing it out of envy because he was making a lot of money from the business,” a relative said.

Amina whose children and grandchildren are currently on admission said the family wass battling with the cost of medication, saying they had so far bought over N30,000 worth of drugs for the patients.

Asked if they were seeing signs of improvement, she said she could not say, as the patients were still in critical conditions as at the time of filing this report. She added that currently, there were seven of them in the hospital while the remaining five had been discharged. Those discharged were the ones that escaped with less serious cases of suffocation from flames.

Among those that were discharged as discovered by Sunday Trust were girls of between the ages of six and seven who could not see because of the smoke. Some of the discharged were vomiting blood, but they were still discharged and are presently wallowing at home.

Malam Kabiru Kamisho Makwarari is the owner of the house. He explained that the old woman that died was his grandmother while the other victims were either his children or relatives. He disclosed that the jerry cans were not directly inside the house but because they were kept along the only passage that leads to the house, when one of them exploded, the people were automatically trapped since their only exit had been engulfed by fire.

Kabiru who was visibly worried said his main problem wass how to sustain the payment of their medical bills. “My only problem now is how I can keep buying the drugs prescribed by the doctors. After that, I have to think of a way of rebuilding the house,” he said.

He said up till now, he did not get any assistance from either government or non-governmental organisations and everything possessed by the family was lost.