According to members of the community, the explosion was from a vessel conveying imported premium motor spirit popularly known as petrol at Okari jetty, which was discharging the product to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company’s Ltd storage tanks at the Port Harcourt Refinery through the surface pipelines visible to anyone entering Okrika local government area.
Report says the high pumping pressure from the vessel pulled out the valve on the pipe’s mouth due to improper tightening and connection by the dock workers leading to the spilling of thousands of litters of PMS into the environment lasting for many hours before they realized and stopped the pumping from the vessel.
YEAC-Nigeria said it gathered that before it was stopped, the PMS have spread everywhere around the area on the water and even upto NAFCON Creek near Onne in Eleme local government area that share common boundary with Okrika.
The Executive Director of YEAC-Nigeria, Fyneface Dumnamene, who revealed this in a statement of preliminary field investigation, said members of the community heard about the petrol spill, which led to scooping of the product into containers.
The statement said some scooped, sold and returned to scoop again while those who did not immediately find buyers stored the product at home and at nearby burial ground.
The environmental advocacy group further revealed that on the night of July 31st to August 1, the petrol caught fire from the lanterns of two fishermen who were going about their lawful fishing activities, leading to an explosion and killing both of them.
While the actual number of casualties is unknown, unverified report says that sixteen persons including the fishermen and two others chocked by petrol under the pipeline also died.
The statement added that several fishes were killed as a result of the explosion, while some members of the community gathered some of the fishes for consumption, a likely cause of possible diseases and epidemic.
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