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About 290 students of the Buipe Senior High School (SHS) in the Central Gonja District of  the Savannah Region have been asked to go home and report back to school in a week’s time.

This follows a fire outbreak that occurred in the school last Monday that destroyed their dormitory and personal belongings.

The one week break is to enable the affected students to prepare and return to school as they lost all their personal belongings because of the fire outbreak.

No casualty

No casualty was recorded but some of the students who attempted to salvage some of their personal belongings from other nearby rooms in the six-room dormitory collapsed in the process but were later revived.

The Buipe Fire Station, which was called to put out the fire, had to rely on water tankers from the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Limited (BOST) depot and the Savanna Cement Factory all in Buipe to prevent the fire from spreading as the fire engine at the Buipe Fire station had broken down.

The Buipe Fire Station called for a fire engine from the Regional Fire Service Command in Damongo but it arrived two hours later.

Support from GES

Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service (GES) headquarters in Accra has directed the headmistress of the school to get a contractor to supply school uniforms and house vests as soon as possible.

This is to enable the affected students to adjust quickly and settle down to study.

How the fire started

The headmistress of the school, Ms Mercy Aluba Ewuntomah, who spoke to the Daily Graphic on the fire incident, said the students were in class when the fire started.

She said they placed a distress call to the Buipe Fire Station which responded but had to rely on water tankers from the BOST depot and Savanna Cement to control the fire until a fire engine from the Savannah Regional Fire Command arrived at the scene two hours later.

She said over 150 female students had all their personal belongings completely destroyed by the fire.

Ms Ewuntomah said the school authorities, in consultation with the regional GES, together with other stakeholders, decided to give the affected students a break to go home to enable them to prepare and return to school for academic work to continue.