News Investigators/ Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, has expressed sadness over the petrol tanker explosion on the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, which claimed 11 lives on Saturday.
Mr Mbah, who was at the Ugwu-Onyeama scene of the accident for on-the-spot assessment, said the government had already swung into action to ensure that the victims received full medical attention.
The governor also revealed that the government was taking steps to forestall future occurrences, including enforcement of road rules and fixing the part of the Federal road that was in disrepair.
Mr Mbah commiserated with the families of the victims, describing the accident as “unfortunate”.
He directed the Sector Commander, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Enugu, Franklin Agbakoba, and the state’s Commissioner for Transport, Obi Ozor, to ensure that tankers conveying inflammable substances have anti-spill locks that would prevent spill in case of an accident.
“This is an accident involving a tanker that preliminary investigation shows may have had a brake failure, fell down, had its product, premium motor spirit, spilled from the tank and ignited.
“So, this is for us a tragedy where we have some casualties.
“But as I said, the investigation is still at preliminary stages. The police and other law enforcement agencies are on it.
“We want to get to the root of this for us to understand the true cause of the accident,” he said.
The governor noted that in the meantime, he had moved those that were in need of treatment to hospitals for full medical attention.
According to him, my Health Commissioner and my Special Adviser on Health, the Chief Medical Director of Enugu State University of Science and Technology Teaching Hospital, the police and FRSC are all involved in taking care of the hospitalised.
“They have my instructions to ensure that maximum medical attention is given to the survivors,” the governor said.
He said that government would deploy some traffic rules to ensure forestall a recurrence of this.
“We are obviously not going to wait for the Federal Government to fix the other section of the road.
“We, as government, are going to take steps to ensure that whatever needs to be done on that section of the Federal road is done immediately so we would never want a reoccurrence of this.”
Briefing the governor on the incident, the FRSC sector commander, that that the tanker spill was as a result of a brake failure by the fuel tanker.
He added that 11 people lost their lives at the scene, while lots of unidentified injured road users were rushed to hospitals for treatment.
The sector commander thanked the governor for showing leadership by rushing to the scene and equally undertaking to foot the medical bills.
NAN