Many are feared dead and numerous others injured in an inferno that ravaged a six-storey plaza located within popular Balogun market in Lagos on Thursday.
The plaza is surrounded by offices of several important businesses which include the Union Bank, Diamond Bank and the United Bank for Africa, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
Some eye witnesses, who spoke to the news agency, said that some people who jumped out from various floors of the burning plaza to escape the fire were carried away dead.
NAN also observed that the plaza which was being used as a wholesale and retail outlet for shoes and bags is directly beside and attached to Union Bank building.
Investigations revealed that the fire started at about 9:00 am and was battled by a team of combined fire fighters from the Union Bank and UBA before the arrival of the Lagos State Fire Service.
A security man attached to Union Bank, Mr Umoru Monday told NAN that the fire started a few minutes before the hour of 9:00 am.
“The Union Bank Fire Service came around and started pushing the fire back so that it would not enter the bank, and later the fire fighters from UBA came to assist them before the Lagos State Fire Service came,” Monday said.
One shop owner who deals in female shoes, Mr Nonso Christian, said that he came to the plaza at 10am and met it on fire.
“People were shouting and jumping down from up stairs, I saw a woman dead with her skull open,” Mallam Abdullahi Hamza, another trader in the market stated.
Mrs Florence Adewunmi, a staff of the Lagos State Ambulance Mobile Intensive Care Service (LASAMBUS) stationed at the scene told NAN that some victims had been stabilized and transferred to hospital.
“There are several casualties. We got a distress call at about 10am that there was fire outbreak at Balogun behind UBA.
“We proceeded here and learnt that they have rushed some people to General Hospital, Lagos but we met some casualties on ground.
“The patients jumped from the second, third and fourth floor and had fractures and various degrees of injuries.
“There were those that inhaled too much smoke so we gave some oxygen, some Dyclofenac injection, we treated ankle dislocations, we sutured deep cuts before carrying them to General Hospital, Lagos.
“So far, we have carried six people to hospital and discharged four after treatment,“ Adewunmi said.
Several shop owners, who were wailing while watching the fire declined comment, one of them simply said “we are sad, this hard economy, where do I start from?’’
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