Kerosene Tanker Kills 20 In Onitsha
No fewer than 20 people were, Wednesday afternoon, crushed to death by a tanker laden with kerosene at Upper Iweka Onitsha, Anambra State, with scores reportedly injured.
Also six people were crushed at Ibughubu Market, Umuchu, in Aguata local government area of the state in an accident involving a truck loaded with cement and a lorry with property worth millions of naira destroyed.
According to an eye witness, the kerosene tanker driver drove through the service lane at Upper Iweka Onitsha where he reportedly lost control around Adam and Eve Motors and crushed many traders and vehicles in the process.
It was hectic time for emergency respondents, the Police, Federal Road Safety Corps, Onitsha and Anambra State Traffic Agency and Willie’s Work Force, WWF, to evacuate dead victims and those with injuries, including the affected vehicles from the road.
Eyewitnesses said the victims might be more considering the distance where the tanker lost control and where it was halted as many people and vehicles were dragged while descending the ever busy Service Lane at Upper Iweka where over forty different transport companies are located.
Many body parts and blood of the victims were seen along the road the tanker drove through before it finally stopped at the public toilet building located at Upper Iweka.
A Toyota Siena belonging to Onitsha South Transport Company that was discharging passengers on arrival from Enugu was one of the vehicles crushed with the passengers.
The State Chairman of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, NRCS, Prof. Peter Katchy, speaking with newsmen at the scene, disclosed that the bodies of the deceased persons had been deposited at a hospital morgue, while three persons, who sustained serious injuries, were rushed to Pieta Specialist Hospital and Toronto Hospital.
Katchy added that one of the dead persons in his 30s lost his head completely and was lying headless at the compound of the hospital. However, at about 5.58p.m., when our reporter visited Toronto Hospital, more than 200 sympathisers were gathered in the compound, trying to catch a glimpse of the dead and survived victims. Doctors and nurses in the hospital were busy running round to save the lives of the surviving victims.
Medical Director of Toronto Hospital, Prince Emeka Eze, who was away in the United Kingdom, UK, was also heard instructing the doctors and nurses not to ask for any deposit from the victims, but to save lives first.
He also ordered for immediate blood transfusion for the surviving victims who may have lost blood in the accident.
