How fire razed 30 shops in Nasarawa market
Fire razed 30 shops in Nasarawa
Published By: Isa Isawade
Fire has razed about 30 tailoring shops at the new modern market in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, destroying goods worth millions of naira, the Saturday PUNCH reports.
The fire reportedly started on Thursday night at about 9:30 pm and lasted till the early hours of Friday.
According to the news medium, it was difficult for the personnel of the Nasarawa State Fire Service to put off the fire owing to the heaps of refuse dumps in and around the marketplace.
The intense heat of the raging inferno repeatedly drove back the firefighters and delayed their efforts to bring the situation under control.
Narrating his ordeal to PUNCH, Muse Abdullahi, whose shops were among those razed down by the fire, said no one could figure out the cause of the fire, disclosing that no fewer than 30 shops were razed.
“The fire outbreak began at about 9:30 pm, and nobody could figure out the remote cause of the incident.
- Nasarawa threatens to shut Lafia modern market
- Nasarawa govt. awards N1bn contract for Lafia market
- Nasarawa registers 11,000 cooperative societies
“The shops that gutted fire were built with woods. The nature of the woods that were used in building the shops was why the inferno escalated to other shops in the market.
“70 per cent of the shops that gutted fire are the ones with the 40 new sewing machines that were brought on Thursday morning, including the three shops of my father. And the remaining shops that were involved in the fire incident are shoes and clothes shops, respectively,” Abdullahi said.
He, however, lamented that if the firefighters had come to the scene of the incident on time, the inferno would have been brought under control, noting that their coming was of no use to the people of the market.
“We waited for them for over an hour. It was after the damage had been done that they came with water. It was only God who knew where they got the water from, and even at that, they struggled for several hours in the night to put off the fire, but all their efforts to ensure that they brought the situation under control proved abortive.
“The fire continued till the following morning of Friday before they finally put off the fire between 8 am and 9:15 am,” he lamented.
He called on traders in the market to be careful with the way they use their electrical appliances while in the market, especially during the current Harmattan season.
