rupture of gas line kills at least 260 in Nigeria

[Steve Savicki]

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/n...nquirer_nation

A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno yesterday as scavengers collected fuel in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa's biggest petroleum producer.

Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke, thousands of people in Lagos' Abule Egba neighborhood surged around rescue workers carrying away charred bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse of missing relatives.

"My brother, my brother," wept Suboke Adebayo, 19, as an unidentified male corpse was loaded into an ambulance. Adebayo had spent hours trying unsuccessfully to contact her sibling: "I've been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone."

A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping her own face and clawing her arms in grief over the devastation of bodies and gutted cars spread around the pipeline.

A senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, Ige Oladimeji, said his workers counted 260 dead by nightfall and took 60 injured people to hospitals. "We are still counting," he said, "but there will not be hundreds more."

Residents said a gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the pipeline for months, carting away gasoline in tankers for resale.

Tapping is common in Nigeria, where many of its 130 million people live in poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful wealthy in this major oil exporter. One pilfered can of gasoline sold on the black market can earn two weeks' wages for a poor Nigerian.

But tapping brings frequent accidents. Earlier this year, 150 died in a similar explosion in Lagos, and a 1998 pipeline fire killed 1,500 in southern Nigeria.

Yesterday's blast, the worst in years, came after thieves opened the conduit during the night but left without fully sealing it, prompting hundreds of nearby residents to rush to collect spurting gasoline with cans, buckets, and even plastic bags, witnesses said.

It was unclear what ignited the fuel just after dawn.

"There were mothers there, little children," said Emmanuel Unokhua, who lives nearby. "I was begging them to go back."

Flames kept rescue workers away from much of the carnage until the fire began to wane in early afternoon.

<center>The sad thing is, America is imitating this in Iraq... killing for fuel</center>

[BITEYOASS]

As far as quad-chin from Exxon is concerned, they are acceptable losses.