Siblings burnt to death at Osun fuel station

Scene of the incident

There was pandemonium in Osogbo, Osun State, on Wednesday, as two kids of the same mother were burnt to death when Bovas Filling Station in front of Osogbo Grammar School, went up in flames.

It was gathered that the victims were children of the owner of the filling station.

The mother of the kids was also said to have suffered burns in the process of trying to rescue them.

Although she was said to have succeeded in rescuing one, she lost the two kids to the mysterious fire.

The remains of the kids were said to have been deposited at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Mortuary, while their mum was taken to the same hospital for treatment.

Eyewitnesses said the woman and her three children were inside the mini market attached to the filling station when the fire started. The woman was said to have escaped with one of the kids, but the other two kids were burnt alive.

One of the eyewitnesses said the two kids dodged beside a refrigerator inside the supermarket, but they were killed when the fire gutted the fridge and the compressor exploded.

The witness, Williams Ojo, said firefighters arrived at the scene late, saying that was why the fire was able to cause so much damage.

Ojo said the fire could have been caused by a spark from the refrigerator. He added that the damage had already been done before the arrival of the firefighters.

The Director of the Osun State Fire Service, Mr. Michael Ogundipe, confirmed the deaths.

He said, “Two lives were lost in the fire. We have not detected the cause of the fire. We responded immediately we were called. We sent two vehicles. We have equipment, but there was congestion on the road, which slowed down their movement.

“We met the fire burning, but I observed that the construction of the building did not follow the guideline. There was no exit route. No fire extinguisher was there. They would have been able to battle the fire if they had extinguishers.”

Firefighters were struggling to put off the fire which also destroyed a Toyota Corolla as of the time of filing this report.

Some sympathisers who spoke to our correspondent at the scene said the owner of the station was one of the honest petroleum marketers in the state, saying he never sold beyond the government approved price of N87 per litre even at the height of the fuel crisis.

Some motorists, who corroborated this, called on security agencies to carry out proper investigation to know the cause of the inferno.

PUNCH