One person died in the fire which razed the Darkuman Kokompe Market on Saturday night, the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has confirmed.
The market was gutted by fire which destroyed properties worth thousands of cedis.
[contextly_sidebar id=”QHvy6td6lRjMGBBKiBLl2AxhTRiNMKEn”]The Deputy Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, Prince Billy Anaglate, told Citi News that reports from eyewitnesses indicate that the victim was electrocuted when he tried to stop the fast-spreading fire from reaching his house.
“Unfortunately, they only saw that a man was electrocuted while fighting the fire. There are reports that he saw that a tree in his house was affected in the fire. Basically it was an electric pole that fell on the wall which caused the wires to be exposed.There was a spark that started the fire behind their wall and travelled to the house through the tree that was there.So he rushed to cut the branches that were on fire to prevent the fire from getting to the building and was electrocuted,” Mr. Anaglatey revealed.
He also added that that they only learnt of the man’s death when they went to the hospital to see him after the incident.
“He was then rushed to the hospital. Yesterday we rushed in as firemen to assess what actually happened at the hospital, only for us to meet the dead body,” he said.
Mr. Analglatey confirmed that the Fire Service was still investigating the cause of the fire.
He however, admitted that the Service’s attempts to put out the fire on Saturday night were greatly hindered by the problems they had in reaching it.
“The problem of accessibility that has worked against our operational efficiency to the extent that the fire that we could have used about an hour to extinguish, we used about two hours. We were not getting access because of the way all the shops were positioned. There was no alley that we we could access wherever the fire was,” he explained.
“I think that as a country, we need to relook at our planning system, how we can plan the country, how we can plan the system and how we can plan our communities,” he added.
There have been several fires in across the country in the recent weeks.
Earlier in January 2015, two children; a six year old girl and a nine-month-old baby died after being trapped in a room that was razed by fire in Osu
Recently, the Tema Central Medical Stores (CMS) was gutted by fire in which items worth over GHc 200 million were destroyed, according to the Health Minister.
By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EdKwakofi