Fire ravages Buea Students’ Hostel

No life was lost, but considerable material damage worth FCFA millions was recorded.

Dozens of students have been rendered homeless following a fire outbreak that occurred last Wednesday, April 30, 2014 in one of the hostels in the Molyko students’ residential area. Though the cause of the inferno has not been ascertained, tenants and neighbours who spoke to CT attributed the cause of the disaster to haphazard electricity connections with naked cables criss-crossing the walls of the hostel.

No human life has however been lost but considerable material damages have been recorded. CT noticed wreckage of refrigerators, gas plates and cylinders, electronic gadgets and other household equipment ravaged by the fire. The worst hit part of the one-floor storey building is the top floor where the fire supposedly started about 5pm on Wednesday.

The 17 tenants in the top floor of the HM’S Belend Flats hostel lost all their properties and their personal documents to the wildfire that eyewitness recalled was occasional fanned by the cooking gas cylinders that exploded in different rooms in the course of the fire. As at press time, neither the proprietor of the hostel nor the caretaker, could not be reached. Meanwhile, the material damage is yet to be evaluated but it already estimated at FCFA millions.

The tenants, most of whom students, fled for their lives with some jumping through the window to escape from the hostel that had just one main outlet and no fire extinguishers. One of the tenants, a First year University of Buea student who preferred to be called only as Clifford, confirmed that one of those who jumped through the window was injured on the leg, adding that none of the tenants on the top floor succeeded in removing even a pin from their rooms.

The victims and security forces helplessly watched as the fire consumed their properties. According to a neighbour, Agbor Sunday Obi, a female final year student wailed and collapsed as she lost her laptop that contains her dissertation. Two other victims who lost all their belongings to the fire were traumatised to the extent that they could not speak to CT.

It is worth recalling that Wednesday’s fire incident in Molyko brings to four such occurrences of fire disaster in Buea since the beginning of 2014. The absence of a fire fighting brigade in the South West regional capital has made the casualties worst and a major cause for concern to the inhabitants of Buea and its environs.

By Roland Mbonteh