Repeat after me: When a gasoline tanker tips over ...

[Detroit_Pierogi]

Tip for travel in Nigeria:

If a tanker full of gasoline tips over and spills fuel everywhere, do not - repeat, do not - join the crowd that is trying to scoop it up.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/scores-burn ... 21zly.html

Scores burned to death as petrol tanker blows up
Date July 13, 2012 - 7:11AM

More than 100 people who went to scoop up fuel after a Nigerian petrol tanker tipped over on Thursday were burned to death when the vehicle and pools of spilled oil caught fire.

Children were among those killed, while dozens more were badly burned, despite a warning from troops who arrived at the crash site that a blaze could ignite at any moment.

More than 85 of the victims have been buried at the scene as their bodies, burned beyond recognition, could not be moved.

The tanker, driving in the southern Rivers state, swerved trying to avoid a collision with three oncoming vehicles including a bus, said Kayode Olagunju, head of the Federal Road Safety Commission in the state.

Shortly after the collision hundreds of locals in the Ahoada area flocked to the scene to collect the spilling fuel.

Some troops who reached the site before the fire broke out told people to clear off, but many ignored the warning, an official from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said.

"[Military personnel] got to the scene before us. They warned people to leave the scene to avoid disaster. But many of them were busy scooping fuel. They disobeyed," Emenike Umesi of NEMA explained.

The state's information commissioner Ibim Semenitari told AFP that "more than 100 people were killed in the inferno... while around 50 with severe burns have been hospitalised".

Large excavators were brought to the site on a major inter-state highway to dig a mass grave for dozens of victims whose bodies were too badly damaged to be transported or recognised.

"They couldn't be moved," Semenitari said, putting the number of those already buried at more than 85.

Some of those being treated at the hospital were also burned beyond recognition, said Geoffrey Ikogha, a local chief in Ahoada, near the oil hub of Port Harcourt.

He confirmed that women and children were among those killed.

Given the severity of the burns suffered by some at the hospital, the toll could yet increase, Semenitari said.

"There is a chance that we could lose 10 to 15 more ... medically, they are in a bad state," she said.

The number of family and friends at the General Hospital in Ahoada was huge, with many sobbing uncontrollably.

"Security people are having tough time controlling the surging crowd," said Ikogha. "The situation is tragic and pathetic."

Many of the dead were motorcycle taxi operators, known locally as "Okada", who raced to fill up their tanks after learning of the crash, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Motorcycle taxi driver Kingsley Jafure said the collision occurred at roughly 6.00am, and that the spilled petrol caught fire about 90 minutes later, but officials said the time between the crash and the blaze was shorter.

"At about 7.30 while I was inside trying to decide whether to go [scoop fuel] or not. That is when I saw that the tanker exploded," Jafure said.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan lamented "the fact that once again, so many Nigerian lives have been lost in an avoidable fuel fire disaster".

Fuel leaks and oil tanker accidents in Nigeria often draw huge crowds and many deaths have been caused by accidental fires.

Major road accidents, often involving poorly maintained large-haul trucks, are also common in the country, where many of the roads are in terrible condition.

Olagunju of the road safety agency declined to comment on the state of the roads in the area, or the potential causes of the crash, saying he did want to undermine the investigation.

Rivers Governor Chibuike Amaechi demanded a full probe in a statement released by his office, which called the event an "avoidable tragedy."

In October 1998, more than 1000 people died at Jesse, in the southeastern Delta state, when a pipeline exploded as people tried to steal fuel.

In April last year, a fuel tanker overturned at an army checkpoint in the central part of the country, sparking an inferno in which some 50 people were killed.

More than 17,000 people died in about 31,000 road accidents across Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, between 2007 and 2009, according to the road federal road safety agency's 2010 report, the most recent published.

[svizzerams]

Funny, I thought the same thing when I heard the news story earlier today - add in leaking pipeline and you've got all bases covered.....horrific.

[el3so]

That tip is about as funny and useful as "if you time-travel to 1911 NYC, do not - repeat - do not get employed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory."

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan lamented "the fact that once again, so many Nigerian lives have been lost in an avoidable fuel fire disaster".
Rivers Governor Chibuike Amaechi demanded a full probe in a statement released by his office, which called the event an "avoidable tragedy."

They will blame the driver.

[ReptilianKittenEater]

I might do if I had nothing else to live for.

[Kurt]

really poor people encounter something valuable spilling forth before them so they take a chance.

Imagine a Brinks truck with $1 bills spills them out on a busy highway. I bet some folks in the USA would get clobbered by traffic for the chance to get some free money.

[Osiris]

really poor people encounter something valuable spilling forth before them so they take a chance.

Imagine a Brinks truck with $1 bills spills them out on a busy highway. I bet some folks in the USA would get clobbered by traffic for the chance to get some free money.

I drove one of those trucks for Dunbar after college for a year. Those trucks crash way more often than you think.

[Detroit_Pierogi]

That tip is about as funny and useful as "if you time-travel to 1911 NYC, do not - repeat - do not get employed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory."

New-York-centricity is always entertaining. Small time. Not even close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

[JITW]

I am not surprised at all - I once had a container with like 1000 bottles of water I was escorting bust open in the middle of an Iraqi highway, fucking people stopped their cars and blocked the highway from both sides, crashed into each other, people came out of every business on the side of the road, there were fist fights, some stupid cunt dropped her baby that got stepped on, that shit looked like a UN Food Drop in Africa - all this for some busted-up bottled water - me and my team had to start shooting in the air just so these retards would not kill each other, but in the end I was like "fuck it" and just left, no doubt several people died collecting cracked half empty bottles of water after

So a bunch of people in the 3rd world running to a burning overturned gas tanker is no surprise - It is expected


~JITW