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On Wednesday, October 14, 2009, Accra residents watched in hopeless awe as the 10-storey Ministry of Foreign Affairs building was in flames. It brought back sad memories of the events of September 11, 2001, during which the twin towers of the World Trade Centre (WTC) in New York came down under the impact of two aircraft which crashed into them. Ours was a minor event; in fact, it pales into insignificance when compared to the WTC tragedy which claimed more than 3,000 lives in that suicide onslaught on the nerve centre of America�s economic and financial supremacy. All the same, by our standards, the Foreign Affairs building disaster was a national calamity. The Americans suffered that painful loss not because they did not try. The magnitude and enormity of the problem was just overwhelming and far beyond human capability. Most of the people who perished in the collapse of the twin towers were actually firemen who were racing to the upper floors of the building with all the accoutrement of their profession, when the vibration of the collapse of one of the buildings brought the other tumbling down in smoke and rubble, consuming all those inside and some of those outside the towers. In our case, it started as a minor fire on the eighth floor of the 10-storey building. Our firemen and women responded with professional alacrity, got to the building and put all the training they have acquired over the years into display to save a vital national asset from the destructive effects of the inferno upstairs. But, alas, they were helpless. They were outmanoeuvred and their incapability exposed. Our Foreign Affairs building which was but a dwarf compared with the WTC towers in New York, was too tall for our fire tenders to reach. We were told that the only tender that came close to what was needed to put off the fire belongs to the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority but which, by international convention and the requirement of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), cannot leave the Kotoka International Airport, under no circumstances. At the peak of the blaze, the desperate fire service personnel said they could do something if only and only if they could be availed of the services of a military helicopter. Dear reader, do not laugh. This is a nation that had never prepared for any emergency situation. You can bet that the military will have its own challenges if the country were to come under a sudden attack. The authorities will tell you this would never happen, and that you can be sure of our response. So it came to pass that all we could do was to wail, scream and rain insults on the innocent and hapless fire service men and women as the giant edifice which took more than 10 years to construct to get consumed by the fire and in a matter of minutes, reduced to ashes vital documents which had been stored on our foreign affairs transactions predating the colonial era. Very often when there is a fire outbreak, fire service personnel get to the place either too late or with inadequate hydrant to fight the fire. Their lateness is mostly attributed to heavy traffic which impedes their movement or lack of access to the disaster zone because of bad planning. This is evident in most of the fire outbreaks in our major markets. The greatest constraint on the operation of the Ghana National Fire Service is poor equipment. In the October 14, 2009 fire disaster, personnel of the service arrived at the Foreign Affairs building early enough to save the situation but were handicapped by poor equipment. We know that over the last few years, a few buildings rising above five storeys have sprung up in Accra and a few other places. Naturally this development should have been factored in when equipping the Ghana National Fire Service. Typically of us, we might not have even given a thought to it, might have brushed it aside with the excuse that there is no money and simply left everything to nature. Sometimes nature can be very cruel and that was what happened in the evening of Wednesday, October 14, 2009. The immediate official reaction, as usual, is always to pour out lamentations and proceed with the setting up of committees and indulge in fault-finding. Promises may be made to overhaul the fire service and to furnish it with modern fire fighting equipment to enable it to match the challenging demands. After the last embers have gone cold, the disaster is forgotten until another one strikes. One of the objectives of the Volta River project was to enhance inland transportation using the huge man-made lake that has been formed behind the Akosombo Dam. More than 40 years after the formation of the lake, water transportation is still primitive, left in the hands of a few private boat owners who operate under no rules. Meanwhile, there are several communities along the lake whose only means of transport to and from the various market centres is via the lake. They have no option but to rely on these private boat operators. Any time there is a disaster, which is a regular occurrence, the same statements that have been made a million times is repeated. The first government official to reach the disaster area will not fail to tell Ghanaians the government�s determination to make lake transportation safe. This would be followed with talks of enforcing the rules on the type of boats to be used to ferry passengers and the insistence that passengers use life jackets. Several times too, we have heard that tree stumps would be removed from the lake to make it safer for boat operators. These things are easily forgotten once the last body is lowered into the grave until another disaster occurs. By now we should have made transportation on the Volta Lake into very lucrative and viable business to make the bulk movement of goods and people between the south and the north very easy. This could have eased the excessive reliance on road transportation between the south and the north. Unfortunately, over the years we have paid lip service to lake transportation, just as we have done to other areas of national development. The Volta Lake and the numerous islands dotted in it are a very important national asset capable of transforming the economic fortunes of this country in the areas of agriculture, fishing and tourism if our political leaders and policy makers will be a little proactive and do the right thing. For now, the only time the lake comes into the national picture is when a boat capsizes on it and innocent lives are lost. The rains are gone and the dry season is approaching. Soon the country will be plunged into a season of bushfires. Thereafter we would be waiting so we are waiting for the next first rain drops to remind us of our choked drains then the cycle of remedial measures starts all over again. The Foreign Affairs building is gone. Are we waiting for the Cedi House, the Pyramid Tower or the Trust Towers to suffer the same fate before we act? Credit: Kofi Akordor [email protected] kofiakordor.blogspot.com