A family consisting of father, mother and their two children were on Monday electrocuted and burnt to death after a power surge in Dinyavoh area of Jalingo, the Taraba State capital.
Quite fortunately, the last child of the family survived the incident.
The power surge which occurred in the morning started from a transformer explosion, leaving at least nine houses affected. Also, many were left injured as a result and are already receiving medical care.
Two eyewitnesses who were neighbours to the deceased, narrated how the sad incident happened. “My wife called me to say that our house has caught fire. She was crying when she called me. She told me that our neighbour and their four children got burnt. I now asked her to call for assistance. I told them to break the house. Assistance came and our neighbours were brought out. The man, his wife and two children were all burnt except the last born called ‘Heart’ that survived.
“They were electrocuted and burnt. It happened that when the man wanted to remove the fuse from the mains, he was electrocuted. The wife was lying down because she had just been operated upon. She made an attempt to assist and also got electrocuted,” a neighbour, Mr Dogonyaro revealed.
He also admitted that they have been experiencing such power surges within this period. He blamed the incident on a thunder strike and the nature of wiring in the compound.
Also, his wife, Patience Nathan Dogonyaro who looked traumatised narrated how her neighbours perished.
“I was sitting in front of my apartment when my neighbour started shouting ‘fire, fire’fire’. She said that the transformer had caught fire and that we should come out. I came in and turned off my gas cooker. I didn’t know my neighbours were inside. I saw the last child of the family outside shouting my mummy, my mummy! I saw their apartment burning.”
She continued, ‘I asked a man to help them. We started arguing outside. Some people claimed they weren’t inside while some said they were inside. So the man broke the window and got access to the room. Then he saw them lying on the floor,” she disclosed.
As at the time of filing this report, corpses of the dead have been taken to an undisclosed medical centre while sympathisers keep trooping into the neighbourhood.
