Lagos State Emergency Agency (LASEMA), the state Fire Service, the Merchant Navy and the Nigeria Police, battled to no avail to put out the fire.
The incident happened a few days after the City Mall in Alausa, Ikeja, caught fire and a week after the MRS Tank Farm, also in Apapa, was gutted by fire.
Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, while reacting to last week’s fire outbreak at the MRS Tank Farm, had called for the relocation of all tank farms from Apapa environs. Earlier this week too, pipeline explosion occurred at Arepo village, a community in neighbouring Ogun State, killing over 25 persons. Between the Christmas and New Year, a section of Jankara Market on Lagos Island had gone up in flames following the explosion that occurred at a fireworks shop in the market. In almost all the cases, the rage of the fire had left devastating damage with people killed and property running into millions of naira destroyed.
A primary school ''United Primary School'' which is located besides the loading bay. Pronto, the school was shut and the children immediately evacuated from the premises yesterday.
Despite efforts by the rescue teams and their teachers to escort the schoolchildren out of the premises safely, some of them who were scared by the flames were seen jumping into the canal to escape being hurt. Only the quick intervention of the rescue team saved the re-occurrence of the Isolo canal tragedy 11 years ago in which over 600 children perished when they rushed into the canal, while fleeing from exploding bombs at the Ikeja Military Cantonment.
The fire is linked to one of the tanker drivers who was supposed to go and distribute the product but unfortunately his truck refused to start and instead of calling an auto-rewire, he decided to do it himself.
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