Property worth thousands of naira was destroyed by fire  early morning Saturday, at a two storey residential building along Harold Wilson drive, near Borikiri in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital went at Lame.

An eye witness account said the fire was caused by a candle light left in one of the rooms of the building the previous night.

Residents of the affected building made several distress calls to the state fire service without luck but for the immediate intervention of the residents, the raging fire could have escalated to other residential buildings on the ever busy  Harold Wilson drive.

When men of the State fire service eventually arrived the scene, 45 minutes after the distress calls, the fire had destroyed several household properties in two flats of the two storey building.

A source at the scene of the fire blamed the delay of men of the State fire service on the collapsed infrastructure at Borikiri fire station.

He lamented that the neglect of the only fire station at Borikiri axis left the residents in the event of fire out break at the mercy of fire fighters from either SPDC or the fire service station on Aba – Port Harcourt expressway.

He called on the state government to rehabilitate without further delay the collapsed infrastructure and fire service vehicles at the Bori-kiri station to serve the highly populated resident in Borikiri area. When The Tide visited the scene of the fire, last Sunday tenants in the affected flats continued to count their loses as several household properties were reported to have been lost to the fire. The men of Environmental Sanitation Authority were also seen clearing the rubbles from the fire outbreak.

However, one of the affected tenants, Mr. Olobo Horsfall, a stuff of the Local Government Pension Board, thanked God that the fire only destroyed the ceiling and the walls separating his flat from the one hard hit by the inferno.

Worst hit by the fire was the owner a Naira wedding and Party Shop and the  children recreation plaza.