MANILA, Philippines -- Carrying what little they salvaged, Filipino seafarers who survived a ship fire Friday last week while docked in Port Harcourt, Nigeria returned home Thursday afternoon, almost a week since their ordeal in the troubled oil-rich region.Seventeen of the 21-man all-Filipino crew of oil tanker M/T Golden Lucy flew home from Nigeria at 4:45 p.m. Thursday. Officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) welcomed the repatriates at the airport. Four other seamen, including ship captain Edilon Bagunoc, remain in Port Harcourt to help in the investigation of the incident, their co-workers said. Then loaded with drums of gasoline, the tanker suddenly caught fire early morning on Friday while docked at Port Harcourt. “I was on duty at that time. I had just left the front deck for 10 minutes when there a sudden explosion. The fire spread very fast,” said Cesar Franco, 52, a seaman for almost 20 years now. “We tried to do some firefighting ourselves but the fire just got bigger and bigger. The captain then ordered us to abandon ship,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer at the airport Thursday. . The crew members then rushed out of the tanker and on to the dock. But apart from running away from the blaze, they had to escape local robbers who tried to seize their belongings amid the chaos.
Some of the seamen kept their things together, but others lost their belongings. Police came shortly to help the fleeing seamen and bring them to safety. The M/T Golden Lucy ship fire happened less than a month since Filipino seafarers survived a militant attack that spurred a blaze on a tanker also docked in Port Harcourt. A crew of 19 Filipinos were on board the tanker M/T Keno when a group of militants attacked the vessel in oil-rich Port Harcourt in River State at dawn on December 19. The vessel's oil tank exploded during the violent assault, killing seaman Vito Cruz. Cruz’s remains arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Sunday. The body of Leonardo Eugenio, an OWWA welfare officer killed in a road accident in Riyadh last month, also arrived Thursday from the Middle East. | 
