Engineer burnt to death while fixing generator in Lagos bank

An engineer, whose identity was yet-to-be disclosed, has been burnt to death as he was fixing a generator at the head office of Providus Bank on Adeola Odeku, Victoria Island area of Lagos State.

It would be recalled that on Tuesday, November 1, 2022, fire engulfed the newly-constructed building of the bank.

Things reportedly got out of hand as the engineer and two of his other colleagues stood on the generator tank while using a drilling machine on it.

The generator, according to sources in the bank, exploded, flinging the victims away.

Giving an account of how the incident happened, Shola Adebayo, who witnessed the fire outbreak, stated that he “was sitting at my duty post when I saw a white man and two other workers. They were trying to drill a hole in the generator fuel tank from the top. The first one they drilled, the drilling object cut and they had to remove it and fix another one. They did the second one and the whole thing started vibrating. They changed the object five times. It was on their fifth attempt that the tank blew up.

“Two of them were flung onto the road, while the remaining person got stuck and the fire caught up with him. The fire was too much and he could not escape. The people around really tried. They were the ones that put out the fire before the fire service arrived.”

Another eyewitness, who spoke on the incident but on a condition of anonymity, said the survivors were two, including a white man.

“I saw the white man and another person on the floor. The other person was bleeding from his nose and could not even stand up from the floor. He was taken to a hospital. The white man was also injured on one side of his stomach, but he struggled to stand up and walked by himself to a nearby hospital,” he added.

Cautioning members of the public against fixing generators without emptying their content, Amodu Shakiru, the Public Education Officer, Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, revealed that the bank’s generator exploded as those fixing it didn’t empty it before commencing work on it.