Fire razes multi-million naira store in Ogun

An early morning inferno on Sunday razed goods worth millions of naira in a store situated in a three-storey building in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Daily Trust gathered that the building, located at the Totoro area of the Abeokuta metropolis, went up in flames at about 6am due to fire that emanated from a painting shop at the ground floor of the building.

It was further learnt that the store, said to be owned by a popular businessman who owned other stores in the city, contained numerous electronics, electrical appliances and other households items, which were all burnt.

The burnt appliances, like refrigerators, air conditioners and television sets, littered the ground at the fire scene.

Operatives of the Ogun State Fire Service arrived at the scene at about 7.15am and it took them about one hour to put out the fire.

The State Director of Fire Service, Engineer Fatai Adefala, in a chat with Daily Trust yesterday morning, gave the cause of the fire as power surge, compounded by some combustible goods like paint stored in one of the shops in the building.

Adefala said the Service got a distress call regarding the incident at 6.52am, adding that the blaze had escalated before the Fire operatives got there and it took the combined efforts of men from several fire stations to put it off.

He said, “It’s a complex, a three-storey building where varieties of things are sold. What assisted the fire is the paint. They are selling paint in one of the shops and paint is a combustible material, which ignited the fire. No life was lost.

“As I am talking, we are still on ground trying to do a turner to make sure that the fire is totally out. But for now, the fire is under control.”