Fire razes 30 shops in Nasarawa market

An inferno has razed tailoring shops at the new modern market in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, destroying goods worth millions

Visiting the scene of the incident on Friday evening, it was gathered that the fire started on Thursday night at about 9:30 pm and lasted till the early hours of Friday.

It was, however, 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.

It was observed that 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, 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.

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He said, “The fire outbreak began at about 9:30 pm, and nobody could figure out the remote cause of the incident.

“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, 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 expressed deep concern.

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.

An eyewitness who was at the scene of the ugly incident said that the heaps of refuse dumped in the market were not good hygiene for individuals’ health.

The source noted that when the fire started, it escalated to the dumping site, and before they could know what was going on, the tailor shops and some shoe shops were also gutted with fire, which increased the heat around the marketplace.

He, however, appealed to the state government to, as a matter of urgency, provide an alternative area where traders in the market would be dumping all kinds of refuse so as to avert future occurrences.

Confirming the development to our correspondent, the Director of Fire Service in the state, Ombogus-Joshua, said he got a distress call at about 9:30 pm Thursday that there was a fire outbreak at the Lafia Modern market, adding that he immediately had to deploy his men to the scene of the incident.

“The inferno began at about 9:30 pm on Thursday and continued till the following morning of Friday, leaving properties worth millions of naira destroyed at the Lafia modern market,” he said.

He appealed to the public to be conscious of how they use their electrical appliances and warned against the indiscriminate dumping of refuse near their shops to avoid future occurrences.