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Gas from a filled cesspit tanker last Friday afternoon combined with the fire from a welding electrode to cause a massive explosion, killing the 25-year-old apprentice welder instantly at a fitting shop at the Free Zones Board (FZB) land at Afariwaa Junction in Tema. The deceased welder, identified only as Teye, was welding a leakage on the tanker when the blasting occurred. According to the mechanics at the yard, at about 2pm a Benz cesspit tanker, with registration number AS 3150 D, belonging to Benco Waste Management, was driven into the welding yard with a leakage fault on its bulk. Teye, who was the only apprentice present in his master�s yard, suggested to the driver to go and empty the contents of the vehicle and return it later for the fault to be fixed, but after insistence from the driver, the apprentice gave in and climbed the bulk to weld the leakage on the side of the tanker. Not too long after the deceased had climbed onto the bulk and placed the electrode on the tanker to solder the leakage, eyewitnesses said they heard a loud explosion that also spilled the faecal matter onto the entire area. �In fact, we all ran for our lives. We later went searching for our friend, only to find him soaked in the faeces dead,� Kwesi Narteh, one of the mechanics, said. Commercial vehicles and passengers that stopped at the junction of the fitting shop for passengers to alight at the time of the blasting were also messed up by the splattered faeces. The master of the deceased apprentice, who was said to have gone to Ashaiman on a different job appointment, was said to have rushed to the premises to pick the deceased to the Tema General Hospital (TGH), where he deposited the corpse at the facility�s mortuary. The resulting stench around the area was so stomach-turning that most drivers who wanted to join the Afariwaa Junction to Tema from Ashaiman Newtown had to use a bypass opposite the Community 22 Police Station.