No fewer than three persons including a boy were burnt to death on Sunday night in Lagos by the oil pipeline fire that engulfed the Abule Egba area of the State.
Several others who sustained various degrees of injuries have been rushed to an undisclosed hospital for medical attention.
Many residential houses and vehicles mostly trailers parked along the pipeline area were also burnt by the wild fire which was reportedly caused by the activities of the vandals who were stealing fuel from the government-owned pipeline.
This incident was not the first in the area as a similar one happened at a nearby Awori community just last year and a preceding one which left hundreds of residents dead in 2009.
It was, however confirmed that three people were lost to the current fire. Two of them, male residents were said to have just returned from a trip and were sleeping inside their trailers when the fire caught up with them.
The boy among them was in one of the nearby shops sleeping with his parents but reportedly ran for safety when the fire caught up with him and killed him.
All the three dead bodies were seen kept inside a Lagos State Emergency Health Service pick-up van at exactly 12:15 a.m. to be deposited at the morgue.
Reporters who where at the scene of the incident counted more than 10 houses along the pipeline and linking Ahmed Sodiq Street including houses No 4 and 8 jumping No 6 as well as more than eight trailers – some with containers, that got burnt by the fire, many of them to rubble.
As of 1.20 a.m., fire fighters were still battling to quench the remaining raging fire.
The major fire on the pipeline right from the hole dug to steal the fuel down to the adjoining Ahmed Sodiq Street, has, however, been put out.
Nevertheless, fire fighter officials from both the Federal and Lagos State government fire service are still at the scene of the incident.
Members of police force and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, as well as the Lagos State Emergency Management Authority, LASEMA, are also on ground.
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