Delta State Government on Thursday said it would take steps to avert reoccurrence of the petroleum tanker accident which led to loss of lives and razing of buildings in Ohoror-Uwheru community in Ughelli North Local Government Area.
State Commissioner for Oil and Gas, Chief Emman Amgbaduba disclosed this to journalists during an inspection of the accident scene at Ohoror junction along the ever busy Warri Port-Harcourt Expressway.
He said that the state government sympathises with the people of the community for the loss of their property worth millions of naira and urged them to itemise and quantify their losses to enable government provide succour for them.
Amgbaduba frowned at the indiscriminate parking of highly inflammable vehicles around communities stating that government would take steps to address the anomaly.
He commended youths of the community for their proactiveness in averting further spread of the fire even as he lauded the State Fire Service for putting out the fire.
According to him, “On arrival i thought it was a war zone because only in war situations you see things like this. It is not a good sight for anybody and and we condole with the families of the deceased.
“I am particularly happy that the youths of the community were very proactive in ensuring that the fire was curtailed because it would have been more devastating.
“I commend the youths and the alertness of the elders of the community in putting themselves together.
“We are here on the directive of the governor to come assess things for ourselves to ascertain the root cause and see how we can mitigate against a future occurrence.
“We have come and we have seen, we will do our reports on the level of devastation and destruction of the incident.
“Our Governor who is a people oriented governor was here to commiserate with the people and he will definitely try to cushion the effect of the loses as it concerns those that have lost lives and property.
“We will liaise with the community executive and the Commissioner for Higher Education Professor Patrick Muoboghare who is from the community to mitigate against the losses of the people here.”
He advised tanker drivers parking in the area to relocate, adding that it was dangerous parking fuel-laden vehicles in a high residential area.
“You can’t be parking tankers laden with petrol and diesel besides people’s houses, we will look into all these options of either moving them away or get a tankers park for them along the road but certainly we cannot continue like this,” he stated.
He urged the affected community to remain calm and put their loses together, liaise with the community executive to quantify their losses to enable government do something for them..