A fire outbreak has destroyed a bride’s apartment a day to her wedding and six others, one of which belongs to a personnel of the state fire service.

A witness, Mallam Dan Sokoto, said the incident occurred around 8:40am when they heard women screaming for help

Sokoto said the fire affected a Hajiya’s apartment, the oldest woman of the affected family.

“When we went to evacuate the oldest woman in her apartment, where the fire started, we found the flame rising, and when we poured water on it to quench the fire, the flame kept rising, as if we added petroleum to it,’’ he added.

When asked about the cause of the fire, the oldest woman said it started in the ceiling of her room, he claimed.

“It is in the ceiling, though I cannot actually identify the cause of the fire but I heard a sound indicating that something exploded in the ceiling of my room,” the elderly woman said.

Neighbours of the victims said firefighters were alerted and they turned up on time but due to technical faults in the fire trucks, they refused to work properly. For more than an hour, fire fighters, therefore, battled to fix the problem, resulting from the weakness of the fire trucks.

“The fire destroyed the seven apartments and one of them belongs to a personnel of Zamfara State Fire Service,’’ he said.

On her arrival at the house destroyed by the fire, the bride, alongside her elder brother, were in tears.

“It was just yesterday we brought all her properties and we arranged everything ready for their marriage life to begin tomorrow but they were completely destroyed by the fire.

Executive Secretary, Zamfara State Fire Service, Bello Sani, confirmed that their personnel responded on time and that state government had revived many fire stations that were down.

“Before now, Kaura Namoda didn’t have even a fire truck, ditto Talata Marafa, but now they have three each and was moving to ensure our fire trucks back,” Sani stated. (The Nation)