Fire consumes woman, 3 children in Niger

(Minna)

A mother and her three children, including a month old baby, were Tuesday night burnt to death in their house in Nkangbe, a suburb of Minna, Niger state capital when fire which lasted for about three hours razed down their house.

Duaglobalnews gathered that the fire which started for at about 11.30 late Tuesday night destroyed the entire building.

The deceased’s mate, identified ad Fati and her two children however escaped death by the whiskers as rescue came handy for them though they sustained life threatening fire burns.

Our correspondent further gathered that the owner of the house owner and the husband to the deceased and Fati, identified as Baba Abba was in Abuja as at the of the incident.

Fire service men who responded immediately to distress call and arrived the scene of the inferno in good time, however, could not do much because the entrance into the house was jammed locked with thick doors and window burglaries which made rescue almost impossible.

Some of the neighbours who spoke on the incident said they did not know the cause of the fire as they had not had electricity supply for over two months now due to the faulty in their transformer.

“The cause of this fire remains unknown and strange to us. Even the fire service personnel are working to find out the cause of the unfortunate incident”, one of the neighbours, Ibrahim Musa who assisted in the rescue mission said.

Musa said he and other sympathisers tried their best to rescue the women and her three children but could not because the fire was very intense.

“We called the fire service personnel immediately we saw thick smoke oozing out and light flames emanating from the house.

“We tried as much as we could but we couldn’t get inside the building. With the help of the fire service men, we managed to gain access into the house and we were able to rescue the second wife through the window.

“The second wife was wounded, she had some burns and they are in hospital responding to treatment. It wasn’t easy getting into the compound and before we could get in the second wife and her children already sustained some degrees of fire burns,”he said.

Also speaking,one of the fire service men, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,said that he and his colleagues had begun unraveling the source or cause of the fire.

“We received stress call from neighbours. We tried to help put off the fire because we met people trapped inside the house. We were able to rescue only three people.

“There were four casualties and the cause of the fire is not yet known. The people here say their transformer has been down for months and they said the people in the house did not put on power generating set that night.”

Another fire service officer, who did not disclose his identityalso said, “The door was locked and jammed.

“If the window burglary weren’t there, we would have rescued them on time and the burglary proof badly hampered our rescue operation.

“Everything in the house was burnt, nothing could be salvaged.

Our correspondent recalls that barely a week ago, similar fire destroyed two shops at police headquarters’ junction, western by-pass Dutsen Kura-Gwari, to a woman with its contents completely destroyed.

The shop which shares same fence with the AEDC, Bosso Business unit has double apartment where the owner operates a salon, sells assorted drinks and snacks.

The shop which also include cold room for ice blocks and as well other miscellaneous was completely razed in another night fire outbreak.