FIRE gutted portions of Sodom and Gomorra in Accra yesterday leaving in its trail massive destruction of property and rendering many homeless.
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| Fire Service on board quenching the fire |
Personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) deployed six fire tenders to bring the fire, which started at about 7:30am yesterday, under control in about one-and-half hours.
Some of the items destroyed included cash, jewellery, clothing, shoes, mattresses and pillows, electronic appliances such as television sets, video decks and tape recorders, as well as physical structures.
An unattended to electric water heater in a kiosk allegedly caused the fire.
The resultant fire from the kiosk then spread quickly to other wooden structures nearby.
Interestingly, even before personnel of the GNFS could leave the scene, some of the affected squatters had started to erect new structures to replace their destroyed ones while others searched through the rubble to retrieve some property.
Sodom and Gomorrah, which is one of the slums in Accra, has witnessed a series of fire outbreaks of late.
According to the Assistant Divisional Officer II (ADO) of the Accra regional office of the GNFS at Makola, Mr Samuel Aryee, difficulty in accessing the place due to road congestion contributed to the delay in bringing the fire under control.
He said some of the victims were able to retrieve some of their belongings due to the direction of the wind.
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A displaced woman and her children and the woman pouring out her frustration
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When the Daily Graphic got to the scene at about 10:15am, all the wooden structures and belongings of the squatters had been burnt to ashes while personnel of the GNFS were still on board the fire tenders putting out the remnants of the fire.
A squatter, Mr Alex Ansah, whose personal belongings and structure were burnt in the outbreak, told the Daily Graphic that he had taken his children to school that morning when he heard the place was on fire.
He said a thick smoke had engulfed the place when he rushed there.
Another victim, who gave her name only as Amina, bemoaned the frequent fire outbreaks at the place since she took residence there some five years ago.
“I left the North to seek greener pastures here in Accra and now I have lost everything, I have no helper now, where do I begin from,” she said while wiping the tears from her eyes.
The only things she managed to salvage from her room were her mattress and some few utensils.
A resident in the area, Mr Mohammed Amidu Harfa, explained that the fire had spread quickly because there were no spaces in between the structures.
This, he said, was because some of the squatters had failed to heed to the warning that they should not build at spaces demarcated as roads.
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