Fire Renders Eight Families Homeless

Fire on Friday night razed down a wooden structure that housed eight families at Shukura in Accra. When the Daily Graphic reached the scene at about 9: 35 p.m, personnel from the Ghana National Fire Service had managed to bring the fire under control. According to eyewitnesses, the fire started around 8:50 p.m. There were no casualties, except for a young man who sustained a minor injury when he fell from the ceiling while assisting to put out the fire. The officer in charge of the Korle-Bu station of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Mr Edmund Clottey, who spoke to the Daily Graphic at the scene, said the fire personnel went to the scene after receiving a call. He said they had a hectic time bringing the fire under control, partly because they faced some resistance from the residents in the area who were not happy the fire personnel did not respond promptly to their call for help. Victims When the Daily Graphic visited the scene on Saturday morning, the victims were still counting their losses. Narrating the incident, one of them, who gave her name as Hannah Drowaah, said there was power outage around 6 p.m. and shortly afterwards, a neighbour started shouting that there was fire. She said she quickly picked up her child and together with her mother and grandmother, rushed out of their room. �The smoke was so intense that we couldn�t enter again to salvage anything,� she added. Madam Drowaah believed that had the fire personnel arrived a little earlier, the plight of the victims would not have been that worse. �At least we could have salvaged some of our belongings,� she said. Officials from the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) later visited the fire victims. Meanwhile, the Assembly Member for the Mambrouk Electoral Area were the fire occured, Alhaji Peter Ahmed Quarshie, has called on the government and other organisations to come to the aid of the fire victims.