Earthquake: Accra on time bomb

The Accra Mail writes in a front-page story that one of its major environmental concerns has been the issue of disaster management following signals of earth tremors in the Accra metropolis in recent times.

The paper says these tremors have featured in articles written by Prof. J.E. van Landewijk, a member of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), to educate residents of Accra and its environs about precautionary measures to adopt because of its location in an earthquake prone area.

The Accra Mail says that the metropolis has experienced three earth tremors in recent times. The paper says that Prof. Kwesi Andam, president of the Ghana Institution of Engineers, in the December 1999 edition of the "The Ghana Engineer", added his voice to those concerns.

Prof. Andam is reported to have argued that owing to indiscipline on the part of land developers in Ghana, a major earthquake could lead to astronomical loss of life. According to him, Accra and Ghana are sitting on a time bomb because the last major earthquake in 1939, when the population was just 77,000 registered 17 casualties, but the current population estimated at three million people by linear projection, could result in 650 fatalities and countless injuries should disaster strike.