Free cooking oil dash impedes emergency services

Zim Now Writer

Emergency services attending to a tanker accident had their work hampered by scores of Mahatshula residents and passing motorists who were helping themselves to free cooking oil after a trailer carrying the commodity disengaged from a truck and fell by the roadside along the Bulawayo Harare highway on Tuesday.

The Bulawayo Fire Brigade, police and the Environmental Management Agency all struggled to ward off the people who were pushing and shoving to get their hands onto the liquid.

The Fire Brigade was forced to spray the crowds with water in order to control them.

The truck, was en-route to Zambia from South Africa when the incident occurred late in the afternoon.

The truck driver, who declined to be named said he was carrying 33 tonnes cooking oil when the smaller 8-tonne trailer disengaged although he could not tell the amount of cooking oil the trailer had.

“I cannot say much because I don’t want to be in the media, but I just felt a strong push and the trailer was swinging from different directions. The trailer then disengaged and overturned by its side. I am not hurt and the rest of the truck is okay. I could not do anything to stop people from looting,” he said.

EMA Provincial Environmental Quality Officer Fredrick Maponga said they are investigating the incident.

He warned the public to desist from collecting liquids from trucks that would have been involved in incidents as that poses danger to them.

“From what the driver told us the trailer unpinned itself from the truck and fell by the side. We were called to the site together with the fire department but we cannot do our investigations properly due to the crowd and it is almost getting dark meaning we may not be able to do much today. The truck company has the responsibility to clean up the spillage,” he said.

“Had this been fuel, we would be talking of a different story right now. The dangers of fuel igniting are very high and with these crowds here the death toll would have been big. When trucks spill anything to the environment people must avoid rushing to the scene but instead call emergency services and stay away from any substances that would be spilling from the truck.”

In June 2011, three people died when a fuel tanker that had been involved in an accident along Boshoff Drive in Sunningdale, Harare exploded on people who had rushed to collect fuel that was spilling from the tanker.

Last year, several people sustained injuries when three fuel tankers and three other vehicles caught fire at a garage in Harare.