Fire Guts train in Lagos...Residents runs to Safety

A train belonging to the Nigeria Railway Corporation, NRC, was Thursday, gutted by fire in the Ebute-Meta area of Lagos State sending residents into panic.

Acording to Daily Post, the cause of the NRC train fire which started at about 12 noon, is yet to be known, however, it was observed that smoke was billowing from behind the parked train before the incident.

The NRC District Public Relations Officer, PRO, Khadijat Adekomaiya, who confirmed the incident, said the fire had caused serious loss to the corporation.

Two coaches were completely damaged by the fire, as residents and intending passengers scampered for safety.

Adekomaiya said, “The coaches were parked for repairs and when we noticed the fire, we asked all our workers to move out. We tried fighting the fire with fire extinguishers to reduce the damage before the arrival of firefighters.

“We will ensure a thorough investigation so that it does not recur in the future. As you can see, we only suffered material loss, no one sustained injuries and no life was lost.”

Some minutes later, the fire aggravated. The fire service was called, but they did not arrive until about 30 minutes after the fire had spread and caught two coaches.

Some of the workers tried to combat the flames with water and fire extinguishers, but the efforts did not yield any result.

The fire service later arrived and put out the fire, after other parts of the train had been detached from the coaches.