According to a petrol attendant at the station, Iliyasu Nasiru, the fire started when an articulated truck (tanker), with registration number, Yobe AA 692 GDM, caught fire while offloading its content.
According to him, the tanker had earlier in the morning offloaded some of its content in a part of the station, but when it came back to discharge the remaining contents in the evening at around 6:20pm, it caught fire, which eventually spread to the lubrication bay and supermarket in the station.
The driver of the tanker, it was learnt, sustained injury on his hand, which got burnt, and was taken to a private clinic, Hamzat Clinic, in the area.
Some men of the Nigerian Red Cross Society seen at the scene of the fire incident when we visited said there was no casualty, adding that they were on hand to give prompt attention to any casualty.
Men of the fire service were seen battling to put out the fire in junction with people in the area who rallied round to salvage the situation.
It was gathered that when the fire broke out and people gathered in the area, policemen of the Operation Flush Bauchi State patrol team came and started shooting sporadically to scare people away. This, it was learnt, worsened the situation as it helped in escalating the fire as people could not move near to render any assistance.
It was, however, gathered that the youth in the area mobilised and chased the policemen away before they moved in to put out the fire.
Attempts made to get the reactions of the Bauchi State Police Command public relations officer, Mohammed Barau, at press time (around 6:50 pm) proved abortive as he did not pick calls made to his mobile phone.
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