The danger of transporting hazardous chemicals is again in the spotlight after this weekend’s fuel tanker explosion that claimed the lives of at least 98 people, with a further 92 hospitalised in Freetown.
The carnage late Friday night in the Sierra Leone capital happened after a lorry apparently collided with a tanker pulling into the forecourt of a filling station it was about to resupply with fuel.
According to the BBC, the drivers of the trucks tried to prevent bystanders from scooping up fuel that was leaking from the damaged tanker.
Although it’s not yet clear what sparked the blaze that caused the explosion, spilled fuel most likely caught alight when a burning cigarette was dropped into it.
The adjacent Choithram Supermarket in the densely populated suburb of Wellington was teeming with people at the time the tanker exploded in a ball of fire, ripping through the area and scorching everything in its immediate vicinity.
Freetown mayor, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, described the scene as harrowing, and the country’s president, Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, called it a “national disaster”.
Alarmingly, fuel tanker accidents and resulting infernos seem to be nothing uncommon in Africa.
In 2013 about 43 trucks waiting in a queue at the busy border crossing of Kasumbalesa between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were damaged, some of them beyond repair, when two tankers collided with each another.
The fuel that was spilled after a seal broke reached a couple of drivers cooking food on a gas stove by the side of the road.
According to Mike Fitzmaurice, chief director of the Federation of East and Southern African Transport Associations, at least 12 people died in that incident.
Many more lives were lost in August 2019, when a loaded tanker overturned on its way from the Port of Dar es Salaam to the Tanzanian capital of Dodoma.
As fuel gushed from the crashed tanker, inhabitants of the little town of Morogoro rushed to the scene on motorbikes, carrying fuel cans.
As was the case over the weekend in Sierra Leone, a fire erupted trapping people scooping up fuel close to the truck.
At the time it was reported that at least 60 people had died.
