Goods and properties worth millions of naira were destroyed by fire late Wednesday at Port Harcourt Timber Market popularly called Plank Shade” in the Marine Base area.

Shop owners at the vicinity mostly deal in coffin production, aluminum zinc, as well as home furniture, Peoples Gazette learnt.

Wooden residential houses in the vicinity were also razed down by the fire.

The cause of the blazing inferno is yet to be known but multiple sources told the Gazette that the fire started around 11 p.m and burnt till Thursday morning.

Efforts by residents to quench the inferno before it got to other parts of the markets were abortive. No wooden shop close to the market was spared.

A shop owner who preferred to be addressed as Chigozie said calls put across to fire service were abortive as “until morning, no official from the Fire Service was seen at the scene.”

Tamuno Akuro, a resident in Marine Base said the market gets burnt yearly,especially in December, but there was no fire last December.

Mr. Akuro told the Gazette that this year’s fire outbreak is the worst.

The market has caught fire eight times in the last eight years, the Gazette learnt.

The Gazette could not immediately reach the Fire Service for comments.

The inferno becomes the third fire incident happening in less than a month in Rivers State.

Two persons in February were killed in a fire explosion at a filling station in Oyigbo while a welder was welding an empty fuel tanker.

A week ago, a fire destroyed goods and properties worth millions of naira at Bishop Okoye street close to the popular mile 3 market.

State Governor Nyesom Wike recently donated N500 million to the Sokoto government to help rebuild the Central Market engulfed by fire.

Mr. Wike is yet to visit the affected burnt areas in the state.

State police spokesman, Nnamdi Omoni, did not return calls for comments.