Piezoelectric Fire in Enugu, Nigeria
Enugu Timber Market - One 'Mysterious' Fire Too Many
by Nnamdi Nbawike for the Nigerian Tribune
December 26, 2011
There is something that every trader at the Enugu Timber Market is very sure of: every year, a mysterious fire will certainly engulf the market and consume goods worth hundreds of millions of Naira. While the traders and workers in the market are aware of the inferno as a fixed decimal, they are however always taken unawares by the time the fire ravages the place.
As a rule, they are always clueless as to when and how the fire will strike and what the outcome will be. Nnamadi Mbawike reports on the mystery behind the Timber Market fire and the effect on the traders.
It came like a thief in the night and inflicted a tale of woes by the time its dust settled. The day was Tuesday, December 14, 2011 and the venue was the popular Enugu Timber Market, which serves both as a market for wood and related products and a factory for the processing of wood into various uses.
The workers and traders had closed for the day and had gone home to prepare for the next day's business. With their shop keys safely tucked away in their pockets and in their homes, the workers had no inkling that their fortune in the market had been swept away by a strange and devastating inferno that blazed through the market around 2 a.m of the fateful day.
Huge and merciless in its mobility, the mysterious fire ravaged a greater part of the market and parts of the Kenyatta Street where the market is located.
It did not stop there. Nearby houses were equally affected by the raging inferno, forcing the confused and embattled residents to flee their homes into safety.
By the time the fighters from the Enugu State Fire Service mustered enough men and materials to confront the fire, thousands of shops, equipment and other vital goods had been reduced to ashes.
The stench emanating from the inferno forced most of the residents of the area to abandon their homes and seek shelter temporarily elsewhere. Kind-hearted traders, who witnessed the rage of the fire, began frantic moves to evacuate whatever they could and sent distress calls to their colleagues, most of who were fast asleep to wake up and return to the market. It was like an emergency call to duty and those who wasted time in reporting back to the market, lost all they had worked for. But many managed to rescue a few of their wares before it became too late.
Hell was let loose around the market as those trying to salvage what remained of their goods, were confronted by hoodlums who were struggling to mug as much as they could from the scene. As a result of the confusion that ensued, entry and exit from the market became a problem and confusion reigned supreme in the process.
But what happened last Tuesday was not new and may not be the last. Every year, traders are overwhelmed by strange nocturnal fires that erupt in the same market but its source has neither been traced nor has anyone been caught and brought to justice. Previous infernos had destroyed shops, wooding machines, generators, planks, among others and even displaced many traders.
When the latest incident occurred, the fire station at the market was easily overwhelmed by the magnitude of the fire and they sought help from the main station, which eventually saved the situation from getting out of control.
According to findings, the mysterious fire usually occurs every year in the market at midnight when all the traders might have gone to sleep.
That is why some of the traders have attributed the fire to ritualists who use the fires to improve on their financial positions over other traders in the market.
"Each time this fire occurs, some people will become rich overnight; they use this fire which occurs every year in this market to make more money.
"This fire has rendered many people useless and even sent many to their untimely graves," one of the victims complained.
A trader, Mr. Onyebuchi Obiorah, who witnessed the inferno, explained how it happened. "The fire started around 2am and destroyed properties worth over N300 Million". I saw the fire while it was still on, but I must commend the men from the Enugu State Fire Service for their prompt intervention.
It would have spread to other lines if they did not respond promptly. My suspicion is that it was caused by someone with the knowledge of the market. I am calling on the state government to fence the market and give us more security," Obiorah, who is also a student of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, said.
A senior official of the Enugu State Fire Service, Mr. Joseph Nnaji who was part of the team that extinguished the fire, said there was need to train security personnel at the market on elementary ways to stop fire disasters.
He disclosed that one of the security men at the market informed them of the fire at about 2am, adding that they responded swiftly to save the situation.
Nnaji advised traders in the market to do everything within their reach to avoid fire disasters in future, insisting the last inferno was artificial.
He explained that the team decided to deploy all the fire engines in the command when it was discovered that the initial team could not stop the fire from spreading to other parts of the market.
Immediate past chairman of the Enugu Timber Market Union, Chief Chukwuonu Arinze confirmed that the fire destroyed over 100 shops and property worth millions of Naira.
Arinze regretted that the fire occurred on the day they fixed for the union's election and called on the Uwani Police Station, Enugu to investigate the incident.
He called on the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to come to the rescue victims of the fire disaster to cushion the effects of what happened to them.
One of the traders affected by the fire, Kingsley Chukwuma, from Achi in Orji River Local Government Area of Enugu State, said the fire destroyed his generator and goods valued at about N20 million.
"We want the government to come and help us to recover some of the things we lost. The response of the fire service men was not prompt, if they had arrived early, some of the properties would have been saved," Chukwuma lamented.
He recalled that a similar fire occurred in the market only in March this year and destroyed goods worth millions of Naira, but regretted that no action had been taken to unravel the cause of the fires.
Analysis
These fires have been recurring in various towns in this region of Nigeria, with the large central market places being well-known for recurring spates of spontaneous fires that can be clearly linked with an inaudible acoustic influence.
This infrasonic influence is building strong electrical currents in the metal objects like wheel-barrows, door-knockers and copper electrical wiring in the walls of homes, which then become hot enough to ignite the plastic sheathing surrounding the wires. In other cases, heated wires ignite bed mattresses and metal hangers ignite clothing.
The infrasound which is now being focused onto the Enugu, Nigeria vicinity is being transduced by the Orion pyramids of present-day Giza, Egypt, which act as a nonlinear lensing system for resonantly balancing the geomagnetic fields of Earth as stimulated by coronal mass ejections from the increasing solar activity.
Enugu, Nigeria (6.45°N 7.51°E) is 2,231miles from Giza, Egypt - a distance that comprises 9.0% of the Earth's mean circumference (of 24,892 miles). Other infrasound convergence sites in Nigeria have been identified in Babura, Abuja, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Bauchi, and Jos.
The mathematical relationship of this resonant site within the global pyramid network reveals the invisible quantum connections linking such anomalous events related to solar activity. This pattern of intense solar flares and the resulting infrasound fires at focal points around the planet will culminate in the intense auroral events of December 22, 2012.
Other widely reported examples of such extreme manifestations of this resonance are now simultaneously occurring in Tenerife, Freetown, Omukondo, Onakaheke, Tsholotsho, Lalapansi, Goodhope, Nairobi, Mpumalanga, Mapuve, Bodibe, Bloemfontein, Hopewell, Tshiozwi, Cape Town, Landovica, Galway, Longford, Glasgow, Dublin, Crewe, Waterford, Peterborough, Coventry, Hull, London, Surrey, Steeple, Egham, Wisbech Messina, Peschici, Berici, across northern Greece, Ratria, Kakori, Mumbai, Kolkata, Charajpura, Kishtwar, Rangrik, Thiruvananthapuram, Kota Baru, Kuala Lumpur, Santo Tomas, Bandar Seri Begawan, New Norcia, Darwin, Rockhampton, Adelaide, Brisbane, Eaglehawk, Sydney, Georgetown, La Pampa, Melipilla, Nelson, and in the US in Seattle, Corvallis, Soudan SP, Minneapolis, New Ulm, Pueblo, Waxahachie, Anderson, Bluffton, Georgetown, Gautier, Crestview, Homosassa, San Mateo, Vallejo, San Francisco, Clovis, Calaveras, Haverhill, Peabody, Brentwood and New York City.