Bonabéri - Fire Guts Société Quifeurou

Goods numbering hundreds have been razed in a firestorm that broke out in the Sodiko branch of the Société Quifeurou in Bonabéri in the night of Wednesday breaking Thursday.

All the items in the hardware store, worth several millions of FCFA, were reduced to either rubble or ash.

Workers of the store had retired home before the time of the incident. The Fire Fighting Brigade in Douala deployed both staff and heavy machinery that arrived almost two hours later. Efforts to put off the fire were especially hampered because entrance through the iron-clad door was blocked and there was no worker to open it.

However, one of the shopkeepers turned up but had no keys to the door forcing the Fire Brigade staff to break one of the walls of the store, where they inserted pipes from their tanks and began pumping water to extinguish the fire. All items in the store, with the exception of those outside at the veranda were saved. Although the fire waged on for some time before it was extinguished, hurdles such as information reaching the Fire Fighters late are partly to blame. An eyewitness reported that residents waited to see huge clogs of smoke billowing from the block-built store before alerting the Fire Brigade in Ngodi. Secondly, it is not worth imagining efforts invested to crossover the Wouri Bridge to refill tanks as far as Deido before returning to scene in Sodiko, Bonabéri.

Both Fire Fighters and workers of Société Quifeurou are still to make an assessment of the loss.