DEATH AND DESTRUCTION FOLLOWING WELLINGTON EXPLOSION
Road accidents happen all the time but the one that took place last Friday evening in the eastern suburbs of Freetown will remain in the minds of Sierra Leoneans for a long time to come. The police are surely investigating how a tipper lorry came to crash into a tanker laden with petrol causing an explosion that has claimed the lives of scores of mostly ordinary people living or commuting through Wellington in the eastern suburbs of Freetown. This is indeed a tragedy beyond belief.
There are many issues to debate around this issue but the nation is in mourning and it makes no sense to divert attention from the very serious business of providing medical support for those that have survived so far and to respectfully bury the dead.
Messages of condolence have been pouring into this country from all over the world. Medical help has arrived from the World Health Organizations and from institutions and individuals in this country.
We thank the Vice President and all the first responders for their work since Friday night. We thank the president for cutting short other international engagements and returning home to lead all the efforts aimed at caring for the injured and burying the dead.
We call on the nation to stick together at this time and resist any attempt to politicize this accident. There are Sierra Leoneans who have conditioned themselves to think and act only in terms of politics. As far as we are concerned they can continue doing this but we appeal to them as Sierra Leoneans, to allow the nation to bury the dead, bring relief to their families and heal the injured.
This was just another Friday evening with people going about their normal businesses. The owners of the tanker were waiting for the driver to land the petrol at that destination so what happened was an accident. It is for the police to now tell us we're wrong.
The first ordinary people to arrive at the scene, as far as we know, absolutely saw an opportunity to scoop some fuel for themselves. We understand some of those people died in the fire. May God Almighty receive their souls.
Copyright © Politico Online (08/11/21)
