Ndokoti: Fire razes nine shops

The cause of the inferno is yet unknown.

It is about 11am on Saturday when columns of smoke rose over Ndokoti. The busy week-end buying and selling in the Monkam Market all of a sudden turned into a beehive with both traders and buyers struggling to stop the fire.

Even so, the flames had steadily begun to ravage electronic gadgets in one of the shops at the front section of the market. Not before long the fire, which defeated all rudimentary efforts to stop it, crossed over to others shops that mainly sold jewelleries, cosmetics and hardware equipment.

Suspected to have been sparked up by faulted electrical connections or breakdown of some electrical gadget connected to the power supply, fire fighting gendarmes who quickly rushed to the area are yet to make any declaration. Some traders, however, said the fire came from behind their shops (probably a neighbouring shop) and just when they could notice some smoke billowing into their shops some articles had already begun to catch fire.

Before the Fire Fighters stopped the incident several minutes later, nine shops had been completed razed while others had merely survived. A new line of activity broke forth as people began to empty shops in a bid to safe even some articles. Two shop owners told CT that this is the second time they are losing shops worth over FCFA 5 million each to fire disaster after that of last February 2016, when 20 shops were consumed.