Some of Lilongwe Flea Market goods, worth millions of kwacha, were burnt to ashes by a raging fire that started on Tuesday night and took fighters more than five hours to subdue.
By Wednesday morning, Lilongwe City Council officials and the Police were yet to establish the cause of the fire, which gutted an enclosed and better- developed section of the sprawling flea market, a stone’s throw from Lilongwe Bridge.
Business owners of the predominant flea market stalls, crudely made from poles and iron sheets, routinely close their business days by locking away their valuable goods in the more secure section of the market, which had several modern buildings.
That section of the market had several warehouses and stalls for business men and women selling electrical equipment and hardware and cellphone shops. It is here, at the heart of the market’s business, that the fire wreaked havoc.
“We just saw fire suddenly engulfing one of the buildings at the corner of the market enclosure. The time was around 8:30pm. Most of us did not know the telephone lines of the Lilongwe Fire Brigade, and a few who tried telephoning could not get through. So, several of us decided to alert our bosses (mostly Asian shop owners near the market), who did the needful… and the fire fighters finally pitched up,” explained Francis Masangano, a night watchman at one of the shops near the flea market.
But he said the Fire Brigade could have done well to deploy two firefighting vehicles from the onset.
“With two fire-fighting vehicles on site, I feel the fire could have been put out easily. But the second vehicle took too long in coming. Even the second vehicle seemed overwhelmed by the fire, by then, and it is good that a bigger army (Malawi Defence Force) fire-fighter came on the scene: this was when the fire-fighters’ combined forces subdued the fire,” Masangano stated.
No one was reported injured in the night fire incident, partly because the stall owners and their clients were in their homes, well away from the normally-crammed flea market.
“This is a great disaster and, surely, owners of the goods and the gutted down market stalls will be all tears later this (Wednesday, July 30) morning, when they will be greeted by these depressing scenes of ashes and destruction at a time they will be expecting to make money through their various businesses,” remarked Nenani Mposa, a mini bus tout, who rushed to the scene from his downtown sleeping post across Lilongwe River.
Most people in Lilongwe and elsewhere in the country are shocked by a series of market fires which have occurred lately in Mzuzu and Blantyre, among other places.
