Not fewer than seven persons narrowly escaped death yesterday when a warehouse situated at No. 144 Oba Akran road in Ikeja area of Lagos collapsed on its occupants.
LEADERSHIP gathered that the building owned by Haano Industries, a major importer of frozen fish in Lagos, caved in around mid-day while workers were trying to off- load frozen products from containers into the warehouse.
An eye witness told our correspondent that those injured were casual workers who were paid daily based on the number of cartons loaded into the warehouse from the containers.??
He said that there was no initial sign of defection on the building and added that they were all taken by surprise by the incident.??
The witness said, “it was a new structure that was recently put in place by the management. Loading started about four days ago and each container contains 1400 cartons of fish with each carton weighing 25kg. As at yesterday alone, nine containers were loaded into the warehouse”.??
The collapse of the building was also premised on the pressure of the cartons of frozen foods? by another witness who gave her name as Yemisi and added,“warehouse for cold rooms are not decked, the pressure of the products was just too heavy for the building and that could have resulted in the collapse”.??
She lamented that the collapse resulted in chaos as the workers who were on duty ran for safety.
“Unfortunately, the guys who were injured were on the ground floor of the warehouse, but thank God none of them died, but they sustained serious injuries,” she said.??
Speaking on the issue, General Manager of Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), Mr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, who was at the scene said that three of the workers who sustained serious injuries were rushed to the Critical Rescue International (CRI), while others were taken to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) for treatment.??
He said his team responded promptly to a distress call received and confirmed that no life was lost in the unfortunate incident.??
“During our course of investigation, we discovered that there were some lapses in the construction of the building. We have checked the building with our machine and we discovered that no one is left in the building. We also used the roll call method. We assembled all the workers and we called their names and also checked their tally numbers which corroborated our findings”, he said