The National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) has confirmed that three persons lost their lives to the gas explosion that occured at the Opic Plaza located at the ever-busy Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way, Ikeja Lagos on late Thursday night.
The safety agency added that the casualties were staff of the New Chinese Food located in the premises of the Opic Plaza.
Speaking during an interview with Theadvocate.ng correspondent, the Coordinator of Lagos Area Office of NEMA, Mr Ibrahim Farinloye said when they got to scene of the incident last night, they did not notice that there were casualties; it was this morning when they were searching through the debris in the Chinese restaurant kitchen that they discovered the three dead bodies.
He added that about 25 cars were burnt while 13 persons sustained different degrees of injuries.
Acccording to him: “We received a distress call of a loud sound from the people living in Maryland late in the night yesterday. They could not explain the cause of the sudden loud noise. We were later informed by the police that a serious gas explosion had occured at the Opic Plaza. On hearing that, we had to mobilize our resources and called other agencies such as LASEMA and Lagos Fire Service units In the course of our preliminary Investigation, we learnt that LPG gas tanker on motion got disengaged. After that, the gas exploded.
Speaking further he said: ” The content started spreading to the areas within the scene, and the weather was charged yesterday. At that time of the night, lots of commercial activities were going on at the Opic Plaza, most especially at the Chinese restaurant. The members of staff were cooking at that period.
’13 people were rescued alive with various degree of injuries. 9 were males while 4 were females,” the NEMA boss said
Speaking in an interview with our correspondent, a staff of the ill-fated Chinese restaurant, Ify Michael said that he had closed for that day due to schedule of duties. He said that he got a call about the tragedy that late evening. “On getting there, I met safety officials on ground trying to quench the fire and rescue people.,”he said
He gave the name of his colleagues that died as : Edwin ebeke from Imo, Suleiman Abdullahi from Kogi and Balogun Paul from Edo who was the Manager of the restaurant.
The safety officials from the Federal and Lagos State Government were on ground to evacuate the dead bodies.
It was also gathered that the loud sound that occured when the gas exploded threw people living around Maryland into a state of panic. Many were running helter skelter while some were sulking around the corner out of fear of suspected bomb blast
