Afamily consisting of a father, mother, and their two children were on Monday, October 2, electrocuted and burnt to death after a power surge in the Dinyavoh area of Jalingo, the Taraba state capital.
However, the last child of the family survived the incident.
The power surge that occurred in the morning started from a transformer explosion, leaving at least nine houses affected as many were left injured as a result and are already receiving medical care.
Two eyewitnesses who are neighbours to the deceased narrated how the sad incident happened.
A neighbour, Mr Dogonyaro revealed: “My wife called me 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’ who 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.”
He also admitted that they have been experiencing such power surges within this period, blaming the incident on a thunderstorm and the nature of the wiring in the compound.
Also, his wife, Patience Nathan Dogonyaro who looked traumatized narrated how her neighbours perished.
She said: “I was sitting in front of my apartment when my neighbour started shouting ‘fire, fire’fire’. That the transformer has 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. I asked a man to help them. We started arguing outside. Some were like 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.”
As of the time of filing this report, corpses of the dead have been taken to an undisclosed medical centre while sympathizers keep trooping into the neighbourhood.
