/ 17 May 2008

Fire put out at site of Nigerian pipeline blast

Thousands gathered on Friday around charred destruction from a deadly pipeline explosion as Nigerian firefighters doused flames triggered by the blast that had burnt for more than a day.

Twisted metal and melted buckets littered the site after Thursday’s incident, which resulted in a huge fireball that engulfed nearby schools, causing teachers to leave bags and cellphones behind as they fled.

The charred remains of a baby lay nearby, surrounded by a ring of carefully laid-out stones.

”The fire has now been completely put out,” National Emergency Management Agency official Abdulsalam Mohammed said.

Local officials put the death toll at 15, disputing the Nigerian Red Cross’s claim that about 100 people were killed.

Thousands of people milled around the site at Ijegun, north of Lagos, where an excavator accidentally pierced the pipeline.

The excavator was still white hot and sizzling as it was doused with water. Police tried to push back the crowds who kept surging forward to get better pictures on their cellphones.

”It was a woman selling engine oil who was killed instantly with her baby,” said Daniel, a pastor with the Faith House Church, who lives nearby.

A lake of fuel had flowed out of the pierced pipeline and ignited into a huge fireball that engulfed two local schools, cars and shoppers.

Despite the destruction, local council and government officials said the toll was much lower than the Red Cross’s number.

”The death toll as at this morning was 14,” Mohammed said.

Local government official Olatunde Agoro, at the site of the explosion, put the figure at 15. ”I don’t think 100 is the correct figure. One hundred is out of the question.”

Lagos state Deputy Governor Sarah Sosan also insisted the death toll was 15, including two babies.

Some of those admitted to hospital had fractures from falling masonry rather than burns.

Agoro said 14 people whose homes were burned spent the night at the local council premises and were still there on Friday.

The normally red dirt road had turned black after a night of heavy rains washed the leaked fuel into the sand. Melted buckets, twisted charred sheets of metal and singed hairpieces lay strewn on the ground. A dozen or so cars that had been in a local garage had been destroyed along with the garage.

”It was a rampaging fire looking for houses to devour,” commented Ike, a member of pastor Daniel’s congregation.

In the two schools, a primary and a junior high, affected by the fire, a teacher tried to dry out sodden exercise books. Families picked through school bags and shoes abandoned in the classrooms.

”Even the teachers left their bags, their cars, their mobiles, and they ran,” said Mike Omotayo, the head of the junior school parent teachers’ association.

An official at Lagos State University teaching hospital said none of the schoolchildren had been injured. She said the children receiving treatment were all street hawkers who had been closer to the origin of the blaze.

At the corner of the street, masked workers dug black sludge out of drains and piled it in the street.

Pipeline fires are commonplace in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, in part because of poor pipeline maintenance but also because of thieves who vandalise pipelines to siphon off petrol to sell on the black market. — Sapa-AFP