More than 100 head porters were rendered homeless last Saturday when
fire gutted a two-storey building at Tip Toe Lane, near the Kwame Nkrumah
Circle in Accra.
The blaze started when the head
porters, popularly known as ‘Kayayei’, allegedly rushed to charge their phones
when power supply was restored after three days of power outage.
As a result of the overload on the
electric cables, there were some electrical hitches that resulted in
the fire outbreak.
Four shops were reduced to a pile of
rubble after the fire, although no one sustained injury in the inferno,
which started at around 9:30 p.m. and resulted in the loss of property
running into thousands of Ghana cedis.
There was a slight explosion because
there were combustible materials in the house, which was also used as a chop
bar.
A victim of the outbreak, who gave
her name only as Memunatu, told Daily Graphic that she lost all the
belongings she had toiled to collect over the years to acquire, adding that she
and her colleagues had to sleep outside, since they had no place to lay their
heads.
She said the victims also lost
GHc1,500, being money they had contributed as savings.
The incident was a cumbersome one
for the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), as it took them almost two
hours to put out the fire. Over 70 fire personnel from the Formed Police Unit
were also deployed to the area to control the crowd.
Briefing the media, the Deputy
Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, Divisional Officer (DO) Mr Prince Billy
Anaglate said the Service received a distress call at 9:45 p.m. and
immediately dispatched fire engines from the Industrial Area to fight the fire.
However, due to the haphazard nature
of the structures, the officers could not easily access the place, a situation
which made it very difficult to fight the fire.
Three additional fire engines had to
be dispatched to help fight the fire, he said, adding that the fire fighters
had to break some structures before they could access the place.
Mr Anaglate explained that there was
illegal electrical wiring in the area, since almost 100 people had tapped
electricity from one source.
“There would have been another
disaster if the Fire Service had not swiftly responded to the call”, he said.
Suspects
He
said emergency personnel had prior information from the porters that
some two men had tampered with the main switch, after which the fire started.
The two men, he said, disappeared
into thin air as the incident unfolded.
Coincidentally, he said, the Service
received the distress call about the Goil Filling Station
explosion at Circle at exactly the same time of the evening, 9:45 p.m., last
Wednesday. He added that the Service would investigate a possible
connection.
Due to the problem of accessibility,
Mr Anaglate said there was the need for the government to provide the GNFS with
aero fire engines, which would help the Service fight fires more swiftly.
Source: Daily Graphic
