By: Murtala Issah
At least five stores and three rooms in a Compound House in the Central Business District of Tamale were razed down by fire on November 09, 2022, causing the destruction of assorted drinks, electrical appliances, clothing and other personal belongings.
More than twenty people live in the house, but non of them were injured. The cause of the fire is not yet known, but an eyewitness believes machine oil kept in the house might aid the fire to spreading rapidly.
Though personnel from the Ghana National Fire Service arrived in time, it took them nearly three hours to douse the fire and prevent it from spreading to nearby stores and houses.
The Central Business District in Tamale has suffered a series of fire outbreaks in recent times. Properties worth hundreds of thousands of Ghana Cedis have been lost through fire outbreaks.
The Northern Regional Command of the Ghana National Fire Service has blamed poor electrical installations and the reckless behaviour of some residents as the cause of these fires. The situation of today’s fire was worsened by the dry harmattan winds, inflammable materials in the stores and congestion.
The Public Relations Officer of the Northern Command of the Ghana National Fire Service, Baba Awudu, in an interview with the media in Tamale, confirmed the presence of machine oil in some of the storerooms, adding that, they were conducting further investigations to ascertain the cause of the fire.
