 Gasoline gushing from a ruptured pipeline exploded Friday as villagers scavenged for fuel, setting off an inferno that killed up to 200 and left charred bodies scattered around the site in this oil-rich country of mostly poor people.
| That's kinda Africa all over, isn't it? |
Grim-faced rescue workers swung corpses into a mass grave as dozens of other scorched bodies awaited collection. It appeared some victims tried to flee the unfolding disaster only to be overtaken by flames spreading across the fuel slick.
| Some of them tried to beat it? The rest of 'em just stood there, waiting to go roasty-toasty? |
The stark outlines of white skeletons lay against a beach charred black by fire. Other bodies floated alongside dozens of plastic jerrycans in the nearby waters of the coastal mangrove swamp. The jerrycans, which had contained pilfered gas, were twisted by the heat of the explosion.
| We were wondering what happened to those cans... |
More than 1,000 people in Nigeria, Africa's oil giant, have died in recent years when fuel they were pilfering from pipelines caught fire - and officials said it would likely happen again.
| "Mbogo! Careful with that stogey! We're pilfering gasoline here!" |
"Because this thing has happened many times before, we thought it would be a deterrent, but apparently it wasn't enough deterrent for these people who died," said Lagos State Health Commissioner Tola Kasali, surveying the scene near Ilado, about 30 miles east of the main city of Lagos.
| Look on the bright side: It wasn't the high IQ segment of the population that was culled. |
"Anywhere you have a pipeline in this country, you have this problem because people are greedy and they want quick money," Kasali said.
| And if they don't take it from the pipeline it goes flowing on by without stopping. |
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