Disaster: Traders groan as strange fire razes 16 shops in Uke
From Francis Nansak
Tragedy has struck Birnin Gbagye- Bus stop, a Community in Uke of Karshi Development Area, in Karu local government area of Nasarawa state as residents woke with tears, wailing on strange fire that engulfed a shopping plaza in the area.
Odogwublog. com learned that the residents grieved after the only shopping plaza where residents had most of ttheir household needs was razed down by the early morning fire.
An eyewitness, who spoke on condition of anonymity said the fire started around 1 am, Wednesday, after he noticed the fire outside one of the shops close to his. The eyewitness whose shop is a short distance from the scene said he immediately raised an alarm for help and later rushed to the house of the community leader, Mai Angwa, to inform him of the inferno.
He said,” The police in the area rushed out to put off the raging fire, while Mai Angwa contacted the fire service, but before they arrived at the scene, the whole plaza was under fire,” the source said.
The plaza which belongs to Chief Kyauta Danjuma, the Mai Angwa, has Sixteen shops that are fully occupied by traders that deal in electronics, provisions, a P.O.S center, a computer training center, and a pharmaceutical store among others got razed down to ashes.
Odogwublog.com gathered that property worth millions of naira was lost to the fire, especially the electronic shop owner who was said to have restocked his shop the previous day with goods not less than five million naira.
When contacted, Valentine Eze, the owner of the electronic shop was speechless but later broke the silence, narrating: ” I just got the alarm about the fire in the Plaza around 1:30 am, on rushing to my shop, the entire plaza was on fire.
” My pains is that I got the supply of more goods earlier on Tuesday evening including the old stock in the shop. None was recovered as the fire was already at the rooftop of the plaza. I lost items worth N4.5m, with N30,000 left in the shop, “He explained.
Another victim, Mr. Samson Noah, who owns a computer training center in the plaza, said he lost equipment worth eight hundred thousand naira (N800,000.00) in the inferno.
“In my shop, I have Two 300KVA generators, Two AR 55/16 Photocopiers, and 11 working laptops, though there are others I used as scrap. When you put all these together, I lost a little above Eight Hundred Thousand Naira” He said.
