The New Year celebration
was a sour one for residents of 2, Morountola Street, Ijanikin area of Lagos,
as a seven-month-old baby boy, Raphael Olawola, was reportedly burnt in a fire
that consumed a bungalow in the area.
Meanwhile, the state also
recorded no fewer than 14 fire disaster on the last day of 2014, destroying
property, which value is yet to be ascertained.
The state fire service had
last year revealed that 1,632 fire disasters were recorded between January and
December 21, 2014.
The Morountola Street fire
was said to have started in one of the rooms at 2a.m., when the unidentified
mother was cooking in her one bedroom apartment, while the baby was asleep.
Eyewitnesses’ account said
the woman allegedly stayed back to prepare food for the New Year celebration,
while her husband went to church leaving their son inside the room.
Tragedy was said to have
struck when the cooking pot went up in flames, while the woman was engaged at
the back of the building.
A co-tenant, who noticed
the fire was said to have raised an alarm but the fire spread very fast and
consumed the entire room within seconds.
The occupants of the
buildings were not in good terms with one another, a situation which prevented
quick response from co-tenants until the situation had got out of hand.
The Director, Lagos State
Fire Services, Razaq Fadipe, who confirmed the development said his men got
wind of the situation through a distress call.
He added that the fire had
consumed the room before their arrival, but that the officials were able to
curtail the fire from spreading to other apartments.
He said the building
consist of six rooms and a shop, while the charred remain of the infant was
recovered and handed over to the Police.
He said: “At 2: 07a.m., we
responded to a distress call at 22, Morountola Street on Lagos/Badagry
Expressway by Ijanikin, which is a bungalow building of six rooms and a shop,
which fire was curtailed from spreading to other buildings.
“However, a male infant of
about seven months old was discovered dead during the fire-fighting operations
and handed over to the Police from the Ijanikin Division.
“Our preliminary
investigations reveal that the fire resulted from an in-room cooking, where the
infant was also kept.”
What a tragic death
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