A family in Lagos loses all their children to candle fire
Tragedy struck a family in Jakande Estate, of Lagos State on Tuesday night after a family lost all their three beloved children to an fire which broke out in their apartment.
The children were identified as Darasimi Ilori (who i said to be eight months old baby), Temiloluwa (said t be 7years old ), and Daniel ( also 10 years old ).
However It was learnt that Temilololuwa and Daniel were students of Sabis Nursery and Primary School and were in primary three and five respectively.
It
was gathered from residents that the fire started after the mother of the children put on a candle, shortly after returning from a church service.
She was said to have locked the children in the room and then went out to pick clothes she had washed and spread out to dry earlier in the day.
Few minutes later, while the kids were asleep, the room was said to have been engulfed in smoke, before fire gutted the flat and burnt the children to death.
An eye withnes said, “When I was locking up my shop around 10pm, I saw their mother coming back from church. The children were feeling sleepy, so she went upstairs to drop them and shut the room. She lit a candle to illuminate the house before coming downstairs to pack their clothes she spread on the line.
“Within a few minutes, I heard a neighbour shouting, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ There was pandemonium everywhere. By the time we came out, I asked Iya Daniel (Daniel’s mother) where her children were, and she told me they were inside the house.”
A pastor, who declined to give his name, said, “It is an unfortunate incident. When the incident happened last night (Tuesday), all we did was to move the two of them from the estate to the hospital.
“Early this morning (Wednesday), their relatives came to move them to their family house. But we have been instructed not to say a word to the press.”
“The fire service officials came around past 11pm. When they arrived, they were not with a sledgehammer, ladder or even a fire extinguisher. The youths in the estate climbed up and drew the hose upstairs. We put out the fire at 12am and I took the corpse to the mortuary,” he said.
The Director of the Lagos State Fire Service, Rasak Fadipe, however, said his men did not get the alert on time.
“When we got there, we met the fire well alight. The Isolo fire truck was the first to respond with 10,000 litres of water and when I received a signal that the fire was serious, I had to deploy another fire truck from the Sari-Iganmu fire station, with additional 10,000 litres of water.
“However, some of the youths on ground tried to take over the fire equipment from us and out of overzealousness, damaged some of them.
“They delayed in calling us and that was why we were not able to rescue the children. Two flats of three bedrooms each were destroyed by the fire, while we prevented the fire from getting to the ground and first floors.”
The spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency, South West Zone, Ibrahim Farinloye, advised Lagos residents to be more vigilant with candle light, and not lock up their children in the room while going out.
