Firemen avert disaster at Lagos Airport

TRAGEDY was averted yesterday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos when a tanker laden with 33, 000 litres of aviation fuel skidded and emptied its content on the road at about 10.00a.m near the premises of Sahara Group.

According to the witness, the tanker with the Lagos Registration number AAA 991 XQ was filled to the brim with aviation fuel fell when the driver wanted to navigate the sharp bend around the airport.

The tanker, the witness said, was coming from Ikeja and was going to the international wing of the airport when the accident occurred.

Fire was, however, averted due to the quick response of the fire service men of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Lagos State Fire Service, the Nigeria Police and other emergency response agencies.

According to an eyewitness report, the quick response of fire fighters saved the situation.

The witness, who gave her name simply as Funmi said that fuel was still gushing out of the tanker when the fire fighters arrived the scene minutes after the incident.

“They quickly started diffusing the fuel emptied on the road with water and drained what was left in the fallen tanker. Employees of the Sahara Group also responded swiftly by setting off their emergency alarm and spraying the road with heavy pressure water to diffuse any possible ignition,” she added.

When The Guardian got to the scene of the accident, he observed that all the content in the tanker was spilled on the ground, which would have caused disaster without the intervention of the emergency and rescue teams.

Speaking to journalists at the accident spot, leader of the Lagos State Fire Service, Fatai Rafiu, said that the command received a distress call on the accident at exactly 10:14a.m while its team from the Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way responded almost immediately.

He explained that the quick intervention of the team prevented what could have led to loss of lives and property within the airport vicinity.

On the probable cause of the accident, he said that the accident might have occurred due to over-speeding on the part of the driver.

He added: “With my years of experience, which is about 32 years, I can say that the accident might have occurred because of over-speeding by the driver, because the accident wouldn’t have happened just like that. Maybe the driver lost the control of the vehicle, but I can tell you that it was not a mechanical fault.”

The poor state of the road in recent times has been a cause of worry to motorists leading to calls to the authority to fix the road.