Fire Service Investigating Dansoman Fire

Officials of the Ghana National Fire Service are yet to establish the cause of the fire that claimed five lives at Akokofoto at Dansoman, a suburb of Accra on Sunday.

According to the Service, it is gathering evidence from the scene for a full report.

The bodies of five persons including a mother and her three-week-old baby, have been deposited at the morgue.

Speaking to Citi News, the Public Relations Officer of the Ghana National Fire Service, James Kwarteng, denied claims that his outfit didn't arrive at the scene on time.

“We are still investigating, we don't want to take a guess, we just want to be sure of what we are looking for, so I will just say that we should be patient and let's complete the investigation,” he said.

The officer also stated that one of the challenges the fire service faces is the lack of urgency in calling the fire service immediately there is a fire.

“What we have realized is when people discover fire, their first inclination is not to call fire service, when they try and everything gets out of hand, that is where they think of fire service. I believe that they might have tried on their own, because when we went saw extinguishers, and that shows that people have tried on their own,” he said.

He explained that the fire started long before the fire service was called because it only took the Fire Service seven minutes to get to the scene.

Five people died in the trapped building engulfed by fire on Sunday at Akokofoto.

The five were three children including a three-week-old baby, their mother, and their grandmother.

Courage Avickson, an eyewitness who spoke to Citi News' Naa Kwaamah Siaw-Marfo, said the fire started at dawn, but no one was able to get into the building in time to save the occupants.

“I was fetching water around 5:30am when I saw a thick smoke high up the sky. I heard a woman and some children shouting for help from the building. It was hard getting inside the building with smoke covering everywhere. We eventually got the woman and her children but they died shortly after we got to them,” he said.