TRAGEDY struck in Lagos on Wednesday as 15 passengers were burnt beyond recognition in an accident involving an 18-seater passenger bus on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway opposite the MKO Abiola Gardens, Alausa.
The driver of the vehicle with registration number LAGOS XW812APP and three other passengers were however lucky to escape, though with varying degrees of burns and were said to have been taken to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) by the men of the Lagos State Ambulance Services (LASAMBUS).
Two passengers in the vehicle also tried to escape through the door but they were not so lucky as the fire had completely engulfed their bodies and they died on the spot while the other passengers inside the vehicles were almost burnt to ashes.
An eyewitness told the Nigerian Tribune that the accident occurred around 5.00 p.m. as a result of a burst tyre which forced the driver of the vehicle to apply the brakes causing the vehicle to somersault several times before it caught fire.
Nigerian Tribune also learnt that the vehicle was carrying petrol in a jerrycan as a result of the one-day tanker drivers’ strike which led to panic buying by motorists. This, it was gathered, increased the intensity of the fire after the vehicle somersaulted.
Sympathisers at the scene of the accident could not control their emotion as they wept uncontrollably as the men of fire services, the police, Lagos State Transport Management Agency(LASTMA) and the Civil Defence were removing the charred remains of the victims from the vehicle.
According to some of the sympathisers, what they found most painful was that the passengers got burnt in broad daylight with nothing they could do to salvage the situation.
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