6years old boy jump to Death in Bus fire

A six-year-old boy was yesterday burnt to death in Ibadan, Oyo State capital as he attempted to jump down from a bus which caught fire at Mufu Lanihun area of the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway.

The deceased was among the 18 passengers on a bus coming from Lagos, but which ran into flowing fuel from an articulated lorry which had earlier in the morning fallen by the side of the road.

The unidentified boy was among the four children of a mother on the bus.

While the mother escaped unhurt with two of the children, one was lightly burnt while rushing out of the bus, while the last one, whose cloth caught a barrier, eventually jumped down, but into the raging fire from the flowing fuel.

A septuagenarian retired soldier, Mr Goke Awodele, who witnessed the incident, said that the articulated trailer was found around 7.30 a.m, to have fallen by the side of the road, with its side on the median of the Expressway.

“When I woke up and came out around 7.30 this morning, I saw the fallen trailer afar off. I gathered that the fuel it was conveying had been spilling onto the ground. Not quite about 30 minutes later, some people had been trying to scoop the fuel from it; you know many of our people love free things.  “Some fire fighters later arrived and chased the people away. They sprayed all the surroundings of the trailer to prevent explosion. Later, they left.

“At about 9.30 a.m, while I was inside my house, I just heard a very loud sound. Upon coming out, I saw a heavy smoke billowing from the fallen trailer, with people scampering out of another bus few metres away. The bus, I gathered, was coming from Lagos and because of the hold-up already building up, the driver was trying to overtake other vehicles from the median side of the expressway.

Its silencer (exhaust pipe) scratched an iron by the side of the road and so it sparked, causing fire to ignite from under it. It was the fire that travelled on the fuel and caught the fallen trailer that made it to explode.

“People said that many people had been warning the driver right from Oremeji bus stop, under the bridge, that fuel was flowing from where he was approaching, but he did not heed. As the driver was trying to navigate his way back to Lagos axis to avoid driving on the fuel, the silencer caused the fire. “It was only one boy that was caught in the fire and he died there. Some others sustained burns and were escorted out of this area by some Civil Defence men,”  Awodele recounted.