Fire razes warehouses in Lagos

Three warehouses were yesterday gutted by fire in Kirikiri area of Lagos State, destroying goods worth millions of naira.

The fire, which started at about 3p.m. at Johnson Street, Off Cardoso Road in Kirikiri town,  razed the warehouses storing imported bicycles, motorcycles and vehicle tubes and tyres. The warehouses belong to Henry and Henry Limited.

When Daily Sun visited the scene of the incident,  the warehouses  were still up in flames. The owners of the warehouses, who only managed to salvage few of the goods as soon as the fire started, watched helplessly while the storehouses went down.
Though the warehouses were fenced and isolated, it was gathered that fire fighters from a nearby petroleum farm rushed to the scene to douse the inferno. Their efforts were successful as they prevented the fire from spreading to the surrounding buildings.
A resident at the quarters, Casmir Ofonagoro told our correspondent that the fire started with high intensity, which made it difficult for the workers to salvage the destroyed items. He  attributed the quick spread of the inferno to the highly inflammable nature of the goods stored in the warehouses.
“I just left my house not quite long when my wife called me that there was a fire outbreak in our area. I quickly returned to personally witness where exactly the fire was burning. Everything happened so fast that even if the government fire service men were alerted, they would have arrived here late. I never knew that these buildings were used as warehouses,” he said.
As at the time of filing this report, the cause of the fire had yet to  be ascertained. Some of the workers could not speak with the press as they worked arduously to protect the salvaged goods from being stolen by some hoodlums among the crowd who thronged the scene.
In about two hours of the raging fire, some parts of the buildings had started cracking and collapsing.