Tanker explosion death toll hits 11

THE death toll from the June 11 petrol tanker explosion in a Harare suburb
has climbed to 11, up from the three confirmed dead at the scene, police
said.
Eight more people have died in hospital after suffering severe burns in the
incident on Boshoff Road, Sunningdale.


Harare Provincial police spokesperson Inspector James Sabau named the
updated list of the dead as Canaan Makunyadze, 23, Lawrence Goro, Tera
Magojo, 37, Collen Makute, 29, Takesure Masaga, 24, Stanford Motsi, 38,
Loveness Kunaka, 32, Collen Mateveri, 29, Zvenyika Chibwe, 29, and Tinos
Chibhamu, 17, all from Sunningdale 2.

The petrol tanker, carrying 35,000 litres of petrol, overturned when its
driver, Hamphrey Muza, tried to avoid a collision with another car, and
dozens of local residents rushed to the scene with containers to collect
free fuel.

Police, who have been accused by the victims’ families of a delayed
response, say the driver’s danger warnings to the residents were ignored.

A huge explosion was heard about 40 minutes after the accident, catching out
both the fuel collectors, passersby and curious onlookers. So powerful was
the blast that a salon car and commuter bus parked 20 metres away were
gutted by fire. A Toyota 4x4 truck was flung into the air and written-off.
Sixteen people were hospitalised, half of them with burns of more than 75
percent, authorities said.

Noble Makunyadze, who lost his son, Canaan, has called for an inquiry into
the delayed police response which he blames for his son’s death.

"This disaster could have been prevented if the police who are only less
than a kilometre away from the accident site had attended quickly,” said
Makunyadze, who claimed the first police officers on the scene arrived after
30 minutes and struggled to clear the more than 30 fuel collectors.

Police, meanwhile, said they considered the residents’ actions as “theft”,
intimating that no deaths would have occurred if people had not tried to
help themselves to fuel they did not own.

“This can be equated to stealing because there was no permission to take the
fuel. It is illegal and dangerous to loot things at accident spots as you
might end up looting hazardous substances,” said national traffic police
spokesman Inspector Tigere Chigome.

Fuel tanker explosions, which are rare in Zimbabwe, have occurred elsewhere
in Africa with devastating consequences. In a February 2009 explosion in
Kenya, 111 people who were siphoning fuel from an overturned tanker were
killed. In March 2010, 230 people were killed in a fuel tanker blast in the
Democratic Republic of Congo.