The inhabitants of the vicinity of the National School of Penitentiary Administration (ENAP) Buea awoke to an ordeal, Saturday, February 26, 2013, when fire erupted from one Njombe's room and stampeded the entire neighbourhood. The fire, apparently caused by hazardous electric connections, swallowed an apartment, vomited smoke that suffocated fire fighters and raised a mad dash.
At about 11am that fateful day, the ENAP campus became the theater of rush and flight with everyone running amok. A huge smoke speared skywards. Luckily, no death was recorded but household properties were lost to the inferno.
But for the timely solidarity of neighbours to put out the fire and clear a limitation frontier between the roofs, the haphazardly-built compound with neighbours' roof-tops touching on each other would have all crumbled under fire.
The numerous fire incidents recorded in Buea and elsewhere are still not a lesson to many. This assertion holds because people, even in the eyes of authorities, still connect electric wires anyhow, burn candles and toy with fire in wooden houses.
