A fire incident destroyed shops and goods worth millions of naira at Ebony Road in the Orazi axis of Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital on Friday.
The latest fire outbreak is the seventh in December alone.
One of the victims simply identified as Okeke, lamented that all the goods in his shop were destroyed.
“I have two fire extinguishers. I had to run immediately to see what I could do. I emptied the liquid content of my extinguisher. I took the second one the same thing, it was finished and the fire was still on.
“We didn’t know on time because if I knew when it started and the exact location I would have used my fire extinguisher. What I have here N100 million will not solve it. I’m tired”, he said.
Another victim who gave his name as Christian Simon, who runs a provision store, told newsmen that the shop owners did not know the cause of the fire.
He called for intervention from the state government to ease the pains of their losses.
“I was just in my shop when I heard about the fire outbreak in my neighbour’s shop. I was confused and didn’t know where to start. Not until the fire went far, it was friends who came around to help me bring out most of these things.
“As I’m talking to you I don’t know where to start from. Everything was burnt down, the roof, shops, the walls were all affected,” he said.
An eyewitness said shop owners and the Shell Fire Service eventually contained the situation and successfully put out the inferno.
Speaking on the incident, the Controller of the Federal Fire Service in Rivers State, Mrs Garba Affiong, said the command is faced with a shortage of equipment and insufficient fire lighting trucks which is why they can’t respond to multiple fire outbreaks in the state.
She appealed to the state government to come to the aid of the command to enhance their efficiency.
She said, “Not that we cannot work, we are working very hard, but our major challenge is the inadequate equipment.
“I have written to my headquarters that we need more appliances. In the whole of Rivers State, we have only one appliance. Two weeks ago, that appliance was undergoing maintenance.
“That was why the fire that happened in that storey building we couldn’t attend to it. I met the Governor and explained to him that we cannot use one appliance to run the state.”
