About 15 shop owners were said to have slumped due to the wildfire that razed Amu Timber, a Lagos popular plank market on Saturday morning.

Residents were divided over when the fire started.

Some said the fire started around 11pm while others said it was around 12pm.

Reports claimed over seven houses were burnt.

Goods worth hundreds of billions of naira were lost to the inferno.

The shop owners, some of who live in far places could not salvage any of their goods.

None of those on the ground knew the cause of the fire.

“It couldn’t have been from the electric distribution because we don’t use power from either Ikeja Electricity Distribution or Eko Disco.

“We all use generating set in this market, ”  The Nation quoted a trader as saying.

Some residents lamented that the fire service didn’t respond on time and when their vehicle arrived, it came with half tank water.

Acting Head of Lagos State Fire Service, Mrs. Margaret Adeseye, blamed the crowd for the delay in putting out the fire.

“Our men responded swiftly to the emergency call with a vehicle. On getting to the scene, he called for more support and three additional vehicles were deployed to the scene. But we faced similar challenge of crowd control. Our men couldn’t get to the fireplace. We had to call on the police to help push clear the way before the firefighters could access the place, ” Mrs Adeseye said.

In a similar incident, the Lagos State Fire Service received an emergency call around 6pm on Friday to Yaya Abatan by Makunola Street, Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos, where a storey building of 36 rows of shops in an open premises of about three plots covering both streets was gutted by fire.

The fire, which was eventually put out at about 8:40 pm by a combined crew of Alausa and Agege Fire Stations of the State Fire Service with supports from the Nigerian Police, Lagos Neighborhood Safety Corps among others.

The fire, however, severely damaged the 18 shops on the upper floor of the building.

The firemen were able to reduce the other 18 shops to slight damaged due to the intense radiation heat from the fire.

Mrs. Adeseye said no life or injury was recorded as the shops were unoccupied as at the time of the fire.

She concluded that investigation is ongoing to unravel the curse of the fire while admonishing Lagosians to be safety conscious and quickly report any untold circumstances to the Lagos Emergency Toll Free Lines 767 or 112 for swift intervention.