By Frank Ulom
A man living with disability has testified how his disability saved his life after a fuel tanker explosion killed 20 people in Ogoja Ndep in Ogoja Local Government Area of Cross River State.
The incident which happened last week saw several others with severe burns from a disaster that will forever remain in the minds of those who survived.
According to Vanguard, the exploded truck was conveying the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) from the NNPC Depot in Calabar, the state capital, when it veered off the road and crashed into a steep hill, about 20 kilometres from Ogoja Urban.
The driver and the passenger he was carrying, died on the spot.
Residents, including a pregnant woman, rushed to scoop petrol from the truck, which had been split open. Some fetched, two to three times, in 20 to 25 litres of jerrican before it rained hell.
A physically challenged man from the village, one of the few young men still alive to tell the story, said, “She (Maria) was pregnant.”
The man who consented to anonymity, added: “She left her other children at home and went to scoop fuel. She had scooped two cans, each of twenty litres, and went for the third. Then the explosion came, razing her and her husband alongside.”
He paused, his hands trembled and continued: “If I could walk to that place, I would not be here speaking to you. My bad legs, the legs I have cried about all my life became my salvation. If I were healthy like others, by now I would be dead.”
The man said even soldiers could not keep the poverty-stricken villagers away from their line of death. “But for the soldiers warding people off, the casualty rate would have been over a hundred. Even so, the inferno was merciless,” the disabled man who watched from a distance said.
Not even minding the death (driver and the passenger), the villagers were reported to scoop, some up to fifty litres, while others filled multiple drums, dreaming of making money the next day. But, disaster struck.
Someone then brought a generator to transfer the remaining fuel into another truck. But the generator was faulty. “It was backfiring,” said a young woman who had come from a neighbouring village to help a friend on her farm. “That backfire caused a spark. It engulfed the fallen truck,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Public Enlightenment Officer of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) Ogoja, Abbey Edet, noted with regret that, “We have had similar situations like this in the past. We go on the radio. We do public enlightenment programmes. We tell people, do not go near a fallen fuel truck. It is very dangerous. But they won’t hear.
“The soldiers had a hectic time warding off scavengers. You can imagine someone burning alive, and there is nothing anyone can do to help.”
Converseer reports that a similar incident happened in 2006/2007, killing several people, including a young man who had just finished writing his SSCE at the Government Technical College, Ogoja.
