About 33,000 litres of petrol, worth millions of naira, were destroyed when two petrol tankers exploded in Amansea, a community in Awka North Local Government Area of the Anambra State.
The incident happened at about 4:00 p.m. on Sunday.
PREMIUM TIMES learnt that one of the affected tankers had developed a fault, which prompted another one to be brought in to transload the content.
But the two tankers suddenly caught fire during the transloading of the highly inflammable content.
The Chairman of Anambra State Fire Service, Martin Agbili, confirmed the incident in a statement on Sunday.
He said the fire was caused by a mistake from a pump operator.
He described the incident as “avoidable”, and said the transloading should not have taken place without the presence of firefighters.
Mr Agbili said some fire fighters got to the area after receiving a distress call.
“Immediately, we deployed our fire truck and fire fighters to the fire scene and fought the fire with our chemical foam compound and there was no loss of life,” he said.
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He said the road had been cleared for motorists and that normalcy had returned in the area.
The fire chief confirmed that one of the tankers was carrying 33,000 litres of petrol.
This is happening amidst acute scarcity of petrol across Nigeria lately, especially in the country’s capital, Abuja.
At the moment, petrol is sold at between N180 and N200 per litre, in many filling stations across Nigeria.
The 33,000 litres of petrol destroyed in the incident were worth over N5 million, given the current price of the product across the country.
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