Goods worth million of naira have been gutted in a fire incident that started early hours of Thursday at Karmo Market in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Some residents and shop owners who live close to the market said they were woken up at about 12.30 am by the screams of people that saw the fire.
A shop owner, who sells cold drinks in one of the attachment shop Mrs. Kudirat Azeez, said she could not come out when she heard about the fire incident at past 1.00am because she was terrified.
She added that by the time she summoned courage to come in the morning she discovered that a large part of the market was razed down, leaving nothing for them to pick from their shops.
She said her 15 crates of soft drinks, two big coolers and her deep freezers were burnt to asses. “I started selling from this market years ago tying water in nylon bags for N1 till now that I am able to get to this level but see what this fire has done to me’ she said.
A wholesale distributor in the market, Alhaji Ya’u Jibril, said he lost goods estimated at N2.5 million naira in his shop, adding that he was able to recover goods estimated about N250,000.
He said the fire is a disaster that is worrisome, explaining that when they heard about the outbreak at night, he immediately rushed there to see what he could recover.
“I sell goods like; rice, beans, maize and others. We rushed there to see what we can remove from the shop. We were trying to move the goods to the other lane not knowing that the fire has started there too. We could not do much because of the intensity. We are just appealing to the government to help us out.”
The cause of the fire, which lasted more than six hours at the market yesterday, has not been ascertained.
Some residents feared property worth billions of naira was lost during the fire.
Karmo is a densely populated urban slum few kiloemetres from the Federal Capital City.
The Controller of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Fire Service Julius Opetunsin confirmed the incident.
“We received a call at about 2am about the fire and we turned out three fire appliances from National Judicial Institute, Wuye and Gwarinpa. And we also turned out a 10, 000 litres water tanker as back up,” he said.
He said fire wardens put out the fire at about 7am.
“Everything is under control, no life was lost and no one was injured. The cause of the fire can’t be ascertained yet,” he added.
He said the cause of fire as well as estimates of property lost would be known after an investigation into the incident is concluded.
Meanwhile, the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, has promised to rebuild the burnt down market.
While sympathizing with the traders, the minister assured that the market will be upgraded to a better standard when rebuilt.
“We are lucky this even happened in the night because if it had happened during the day time, it would have been very difficult for all the security agencies and all the fire fighters to quench the fire but by the special grace of Allah, we will replace all what is lost here’’ he said.
