Residents of Kpaguri are calling on the Ghana National Fire Service in the Wa municipality to up their game in the fight against fire.
This call was made by tenants of a 19-bedroom compound house that was reduced by fires last Monday, resulting in a loss of properties running into GH 100,000.
Burning debris
Charred properties such as refrigerators, television sets, burners, cylinders, satellite dishes, decoders, bowls, clothes, laptop computers, and cash were among other items destroyed.
Narrating the incident leading to the inferno, residents complained bitterly over the conduct of the fire personnel during the time of the mishap.
“We called them for over thirty minutes with no response”, a tenant lamented at the scene.
A level four hundred students from the University for Development Studies, Katharine Derry, were left devastated as she couldn’t even explain her loss so well. Katharine, who was sightseeing through the debris of the fire with interest, quickly drew my attention.
Asked what she was looking for, she responded “nothing” with a smile that spoke so much pain in her. “My laptop, my project work. All is gone,” she added.
But for the interventions of a former Assemblymember of the area, Peter Salia, a fight almost broke up between Fire Officers who came around the following morning to inspect the incident.
The residents accused the fire officers of negligence during the fires, saying properties could have been saved if the fire officers had responded promptly, citing the distance of the regional fire command to the scene as very close by.
The fire officer at the scene explained that the emergency numbers that everyone could have called were not the right number to call, citing that a call on that number ends up in the Tamale GNFS office until a relay is made to them here in Wa.
He also explained that houses that have concrete gables up to the roof per room are better protected when fires attack since the building doesn’t raise its concrete walls to the ceiling points per room.
Another female tenant is heard in a radio report lambasting the fire personnel for not being up to the task at the moment they arrived. He is heard accusing the personnel of suggesting to the residents to use basins to go and draw water from a nearby borehole.
NADMO has since donated relief items to the victims of the disaster. The items, composed of rice, maize, mosquito nets, blankets, and other edibles, were yesterday presented by the regional minister, Hon. Alhasan Sulemana.
This is an archived story from May 2017
