Fire gutted a tank farm yesterday in the Oando Depot on Gaskiya Road, Ijora Badia area of Lagos State.
The fire was still raging as at press time last night. The fire was seen from other areas of the state more than seven hours after the incident happened. A source confided in The Guardian that the tank capacity was 7.5 million litres of petrol, approximately about 222 fully loaded trucks.
According to emergency responders, there were no casualties. Confirming the development, the Director-General, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, said emergency responders were promptly deployed to the area to salvage the situation as soon as they were alerted to the incident.
“The agency activated its emergency response plan and all relevant stakeholders took appropriate measures to combat the flames and prevented secondary incidents,” he said.
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Also, the Acting Zonal Coordinator, Southwest Zonal Office of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Ibrahim Farinloye, said officials of various emergency management agencies were deployed to evacuate staff of Oando and put the situation under control.
Farinloye said the fire started at the depot around 12:05p.m. adding that the agency was not able to immediately determine the cause of the fire. OVH Energy, the licencee company behind the Oando retail brand in Africa, also confirmed that a fire broke out at its Terminal 1, in Apapa. The company said the fire appeared to have come from one of the tanks.
It said on its official Twitter handle: “Preliminary information about the incident reveals that the fire emanated from a tank within the terminal, we confirm reports on the fire incident, which took place.
“Whilst investigation has been launched to ascertain other details, we have a team of professional firefighters on the ground to manage the outbreak. We are happy to state that as at the time of this report, there are no casualties recorded.
“Safety remains our priority at OVH Energy as we operate under high safety standards to curb incidence of fire outbreaks as well as other health and safety risks from happening at any of our stations,” the company said.
Oando sold its downstream business to OVH in 2015, although the branding remained the same.
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