Lagos armoury explosion
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The Lagos armoury explosion was the accidental detonation of a large stock of military high explosives at a storge facility in the city of Lagos, Nigeria on the 27 January 2002. The incident burnt down most of Northern Lagos, killed at least 1,100 people and displaced over 20,000.
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[edit] The Initial Explosion
The Ikeja military cantonment was a large barracks and military storage area in the city of Lagos, situated north of the city centre near Isolo and Onigbongo. In January 2002, the base was being used to store a large quantity of "high calibre bombs", as well as other sundry explosives. In the afternoon of the 27th a fire broke out in a street market being held inside the base, which was also home to the families of soldiers, and at around 6.00pm the fire spread to the base's munition store, causing an enormous explosion to rise from the armoury. This killed most of the base staff and their families, as well as immediately destroying several nearby streets, and starting numerous fires further afield. Tremors from the blast collapsed many poorly built houses in the area, trapping people inside and starting new fires amidst the wreckage from cooking appliances. These tremors were so powerful that windows shattered several miles away and the blast could be felt more than 50 kilometers inland.
Also thrown up by the blast were thousands of military munitions, which fell to earth in a rain of exploding shells, grenades and bullets casting further destruction across most of the Northern part of the city. Thousands of people, seeing explosions and fires breaking out, fled their houses and attempted to leave the affected area. As the streets became more and more crowded, continual explosions from the shells falling into the city caused panic. A stampede developed, and panicking people fled in all directions, trampling those who fell.
[edit] The Canal Tragedy
In central Lagos there is a large canal, which runs from north to south parallel to the Isolo-Oshodi expressway through the centre of the city. It borders a banana plantation, which many refugees thought might be a safe haven from the falling shells and spreading fires. Unfortunately, the canal separated the plantation from the city and was covered by water hyacinth and thus hidden in the darkness. Tragically, as the crowd charged towards the plantation hundreds, if not thousands, of panicking people fell into the water. Those on the bottom were crushed by yet more people falling into the waterway, and in the struggling confusion, at least 600 people were killed. These bodies drifted down the canal, some being found as far as ten kilometers from the explosion.
The city itself burned through most of the night, with explosions continuing to boil out of the wrecked armoury until the afternoon of the 28th. The emergency services were woefully inadequate to deal with the devastation, as there were not enough fire crews or water points available to cope with the conflagration, which consumed large parts of the city's northern suburbs. City hospitals were also utterly overwhelmed, many injured going for hours without any medical attention even when they did manage to reach one of the few medical facilities. The military, too, having suffered the loss of many of its Lagos-based personnel in the initial explosion, was not in a position to assume control of the city and did not appear on the scene in large numbers until late on the 28th.
By the evening of the 28th, most of the fires were under control, and people began returning to the city and attempting to find loved ones separated in the stampede. Many of the dead were children, separated from their families in the confusion and subsequently crushed in the crowds that filled the streets. On top of the dead from the ditch, at least 500 people had died in the city itself, either killed by falling munitions, trampled by the crowds, or caught in the fires.
[edit] The Aftermath
The final death toll is hard to compute, because although at least 1,100 bodies were recovered on the following day, the full total was probably much higher, with many bodies lost in the fires or the canal. In addition to the dead, at least 5,000 people were injured in the disaster and over 12,000 left homeless, with entire districts of the city gutted. About 20,000 people had fled the city on the night of the 27th, and the survivors returned over the course of the next week.
The Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo was present at the scene on the 28th along with most senior city and country politicians, and he publicly demanded answers from the military as to why such a huge ammunition dump was kept in such a poorly maintained and public location. It emerged some time later that a small explosion had occurred at the base the previous year, following which the army was advised by city officials to remove or modernise the armoury, but took no action. On the evening of the 28th, George Emdin, the commander of the Ikeja base who had not been present during the explosion, issued a statement:
"On behalf of the military, we are sorry, this is an old ammunition depot with high-calibre bombs ... some efforts were being made in the recent past to try to improve the storage facility, but this accident happened before the high authorities could do what was needed"
This excuse provoked fury from the people of Lagos, who said that the military was just making the same excuses for their mistakes they had made during the dictatorship, and that nothing would be done to improve safety at other neglected ammunition dumps, many of which have not been properly maintained since Nigeria gained democracy in 1999 following twenty years of military rule.
Numerous African relief agencies, including the Red Cross provided aid to the thousands of homeless and lost people in the weeks following the disaster, attempting to reunite at least 2,000 separated families from the city. The recovery process took some years as the rebuilding program was lengthy and expensive, and many people suffered homelessness and poverty in this period due to the loss of their houses and livelihoods in the fire.
