On Tuesday, November 1, 2022, there was a fire outbreak at the head office of Providus Bank situated on Adeola Odeku, Victoria Island area of Lagos State.
While an unspecified number of people sustained various degrees of injuries from the fire accident at Providus Bank, an engineer whose identity was yet to be disclosed burnt to death.
Sources who spoke to BizWatch Nigeria concerning the incident said the fire emanated from a generator.
In the early hours of the day, the victims, a white man, and two of his other colleagues, according to the sources, stood on the generator tank while using a drilling machine on it.
The tank of the generator, which contained diesel, exploded, as the impact flung the three men away.
“I was sitting at my duty post when I saw a white man and two other workers. They were trying to drill a hole in the generator fuel tank from the top. The first one they drilled, the drilling object cut and they had to remove it and fix another one. They did the second one and the whole thing started vibrating. They changed the object five times. It was on their fifth attempt that the tank blew up.
“Two of them were flung onto the road, while the remaining person got stuck and the fire caught up with him. The fire was much and he could not escape. The people around really tried. They were the ones that put out the fire before the fire service arrived,” an eyewitness who identified himself as Sola said as he narrated how the incident happened.
Another source, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, stated that the two survivors of the incident sustained life-threatening injuries.
Amodu Shakiru, the spokesperson of the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, said preliminary investigation revealed that the generator fuel was not emptied while the repair work was ongoing.
He, therefore, advised engineers to always empty the tank of any generator before fixing it.
