{"id":5970,"date":"2015-09-04T20:21:02","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T20:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=5970"},"modified":"2015-09-04T20:21:02","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T20:21:02","slug":"scores-jump-to-death-as-fire-guts-plaza-in-popular-lagos-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=5970","title":{"rendered":"Scores jump to death as fire guts plaza in popular Lagos Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several people were feared dead and others injured when a six storey plaza in the heart of the popular Balogun market in Lagos was gutted by fire on Thursday.
\nThe plaza is surrounded by several important businesses which included the Union Bank, Diamond Bank and the United Bank for Africa (UBA).
\nIt was also observed that the plaza which was being used as a wholesale and retail outlet for shoes and bags is directly beside and attached to Union Bank building.
\nInvestigations revealed that the fire started at about 9:00 am and was battled by a team of combined fire fighters from the Union Bank and UBA before the arrival of the Lagos State Fire Service.
\nSome eye witnesses, who spoke said that some people who jumped out from various floors of the burning plaza to escape the fire were carried away dead.
\nMallam Hamza Abdullahi, a trader in the market said that he saw three dead bodies and five people who were wounded.
\n\u201cPeople were shouting and jumping down from up stairs, I saw a woman dead with her skull open,\u201c he said.
\nMrs Florence Adewunmi, a staff of the Lagos State Ambulance Mobile Intensive Care Service (LASAMBUS) stationed at the scene said that some victims had been stabilized and transferred to hospital.
\n\u201cThere are several casualties. We got a distress call at about 10am that there was fire outbreak at Balogun behind UBA.
\n\u201cWe proceeded here and learnt that they have rushed some people to General Hospital, Lagos but we met some casualties on ground.
\n\u201cThe patients jumped from the second, third and fourth floor and had fractures and various degrees of injuries.
\n\u201cThere were those that inhaled too much smoke so we gave some oxygen, some Dyclofenac injection, we treated ankle dislocations, we sutured deep cuts before carrying them to General Hospital, Lagos.
\n\u201cSo far, we have carried six people to hospital and discharged four after treatment,\u201c Adewunmi said.
\nOne of shop owners who deals on female shoes, Mr Nonso Christian, said that he came to the plaza at 10am and met it on fire.
\n\u201cI met the plaza on fire and I tried to go in to bring out my goods but I couldn\u2019t because the fire is too much.
\n\u201cMy shop is on the second floor and I just re-stocked on Monday, I don\u2019t know what to do because the second floor is still on fire,\u201c he said.
\nSeveral other shop owners, who were wailing while watching the fire declined comment, one of them simply said \u201cwe are sad, this hard economy, where do I start from?\u2019\u2019
\nA security man attached to Union Bank, Mr Umoru Monday told NAN that the fire started a few minutes before the hour of 9:00 am.
\n\u201cThe Union Bank Fire Service came around and started pushing the fire back so that it would not enter the bank, and later the fire fighters from UBA came to assist them before the Lagos State Fire Service came,\u201c Monday said.
\nAn official of the Lagos State Fire Service carrying a cylinder on his back into the burning plaza declined comment.
\nHe said that senior officers of the service who could speak to press were attacking the fire on various floors.
\n\u201cI cannot tell you anything, our fire boss is up in that burning building now and our main aim is to put the fire out. We are attacking it on various floors,\u201c he said.
\nA lone Police man battled to keep spectators away while security men of Diamond Bank situated beside Union Bank turned their customers away.
\n– See more at: http:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\"Delta<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several people were feared dead and others injured when a six storey plaza in the heart of the popular Balogun market in Lagos was gutted by fire on Thursday. The plaza is surrounded by several important businesses which included the Union Bank, Diamond Bank and the United Bank for Africa (UBA). It was also observed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[632,631],"class_list":["post-5970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-balogun-market","tag-lagos-fire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Delta-newsroom-logo1.png","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1yi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5971,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970\/revisions\/5971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}