Fire razes hotel in Lagos

Yejide Gbenga-Ogundare, Lagos - 12.03.2008

Few weeks after fire razed Balogun market in Lagos, the Hillcrest Hotel on Afolabi Awosanya Street, off Agbaoku street, Opebi, was also razed by fire on Tuesday. The fire, which started around 2.30 p.m and completely razed the two top apartments of the hotel, was on for about an hour despite serious efforts to combat it.

Nigerian Tribune investigation revealed that the fire started following an explosion which some eye witnesses attributed to the power generating set being used by the hotel.

There had been power outage in the area for four days and the Hilcrest, which started operations some months back, like other institutions of its kind, had been running on the generating set since then.

Though men of the Lagos State Safety and Fire Service got to the scene in record time, they could not stop the fire which hithertho was in one apartment from expanding to the next apartment. The fire could not be stopped on time because the water in the truck brought by the fire men with registration number LA 70 A40 finished under 20 minutes.

Management, staff and neighbours were on ground with buckets of water and detergents to help the firemen stop the raging inferno. The Hillcrest Hotel owned by foreigners lost the two apartments on its second floor with property estimated by some staff members at billions of naira to the inferno.