By Amos Okioma
More than 300 persons were on Saturday rendered homeless in Yenagoa, following fire incident that gutted a neighbourhood in Ekeki suburb of Bayelsa capital.
It was gathered that the inferno, which occurred at about 2 am on Friday, also destroyed valuables worth millions of naira.
Residents of the affected area located behind the Ekeki Divisional Police Station said they lost items like generator sets, television sets, boxes of fabrics, huge sums of money and phones, among others, to the fire.
No life was, however, lost in the fire mishap.
The cause of the fire could not be ascertained but one of the residents, who gave his name simply as Nicholas, suspected that the fire might have been caused by a lit candle as there was no electricity when the incident occurred.
He said that firemen who arrived at the scene in three fire-fighter vehicles put out the fire and stopped it from spreingading to a part of the buildings in the Ekeki Police Station.
“It happened this morning, some minutes to 2am. We have not slept since then till now. Three fire-fighter vehicles came and stopped the fire if not it could have entered the police station.
“We don’t know what caused the fire, whether it is candle, we don’t know. But it started with a little smoke coming out from someone’s house, and one woman saw it, but she did not tell anybody.
“We are more than 300 people living here. Families, husbands and wives and their children, we are more than 300 here.
“One woman lost N300,000 that some persons kept in her custody. Her husband’s money was N120,000. Everything got burnt, one kobo is not remaining”. Nicholas said
He appealed to the Bayelsa government and well-meaning organisations and individuals to come to their aide, saying they could not salvage much of their valuables.
