No fewer than 40 families were on Wednesday rendered homeless after an early morning fire razed a batcher village in Rumuolumeni clan, Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Southern City News gathered that the fire gutted the makeshift estate located at Jubilee Avenue in the area around 1am.
The entire apartments were engulfed by the inferno, even as property worth millions of naira were destroyed.
Some of the victims of the incident lamented that they lost all their property to the disaster.
They explained that they could not remove a pin from their apartment because of the raging fire.
They regret that their belongings had been burnt to ashes before fire fighters arrived at the scene of the incident.
Obinna Onukwu, one of the victims, narrated, “I was sitting outside with my friends around 1am when a small boy that came to buy a bottle of drink ran to call me that there was fire in my room.
“I was shocked because I knew that I did not leave any candle on and the stove was not also on. I immediately remembered that I have small money in my room. So, I ran to collect the money, but before I got there, fire had taken over the whole room.
“I tried to enter, but they dragged me out. I only noticed that my body was hot and they were pouring water on me. With the heat of the fire, we could not remove anything from our houses.
“All our property were lost to the fire. We are frustrated. The money we have made and our Christmas things got burnt.”
Onukwu and some of the victims of the inferno, however, called on the state government for assistance as they complained of being frustrated and homeless.
Source: Punch
