The fire is said to have broken out around 8:00pm on Wednesday night. It affected mainly grocery and live chicken kiosks.
Eyewitnesses say that one of the walls in the market collapsed on the lockups hosting gas cylinders forcing them to burst. The leaking gas is reported to have spilt over before sparking off big flames of fire, which quickly spread to the rest of the neighbouring stalls.
Musa Bakaki, a trader in the market says that there were communication gaps and delays in alerting police, living the fire spread to other areas within the market. “It was a big blast with huge volumes of smoke concentrated within the gas cylinder shop. We had anticipated that it would be contained. However, it later on produced big flames of fire and we only contacted police when the fire had widely spread already,” he said.
Lawrence Ssemaganda, the Aldina cell LC1 chairperson has asked the responsible government authorities to devise means of constructing permanent structures within Napier market, which he says will limit the number of fire outbreaks.
