Fire Guts Over 20 Petrol Tankers Along NPA Expressway In Warri

A fire outbreak occurred at the early hours of Tuesday along the NPA expressway before Nigercat junction in Ekpan, near Warri, Delta state, burning over 20 petroleum tankers.

It was not clear what led to the fire outbreak but sources said the fire which raged for hours with no fire service personnel on sight to quell it, destroyed goods worth hundreds of millions of naira.

Some of trucks that were burnt, according to sources were newly purchased by the owners.

The truck drivers, notoriously queue the heavy duty vehicles along the ever-busy expressway awaiting their turn to lift petroleum products at the nearby Warri refinery depot.

BigPen Online learnt that some of the trucks touched were among the ones cleared from the roadside where they usually constitute danger for motorists, last week when President Muhammadu Buhari visited the oil city.

Similar incidents had occurred in the tankers’ park located near the Warri Refinery sometime in 2016, resulting from a pipeline fire on the fringe of the Army Barracks along the Effurun-Sapele Road, Delta state which also left several cars burnt.

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However, the spread of the fire is often blamed according to reports on the none effective state government owned fire service stations in the metropolis, a development which residents say has been a major challenge in the state whenever there is fire outbreak.