Fire guts "Sodom and Gomorrah"

Accra, Sept. 29, GNA - Fire on Friday swept through parts of "Sodom and Gomorrah", a sprawling shanty town in Accra, destroying several million cedis worth of property and claiming a number of lives. According to eyewitness accounts, the fire started at about 1500 hours at a popular spot in the area being used as a brothel, and spread to other structures, after efforts to extinguish the initial source had failed.

When the GNA got to the scene, almost everything in that part of the vicinity had been completely razed to the ground, with resident scavenging through the smouldering fire to salvage what was left of their "properties".


A resident, Opoku Ntiamoah, told the GNA that when the fire initially started, the Fire Service was called in to remedy the situation,


He said that two fire tenders arrived on the scene but the personnel after fruitless attempts to put out the fire abandoned the mission because of lack of access to the area.


Thus, the fire, aided by the direction of the wind, destroyed everything in its path from the embankment of the Korle lagoon to almost the Agbogbloshie market road before the Fire Service personnel could have enough access to put out the fire.

Ntiamoah attributed the severity of the damage to the combustible nature of the materials used in putting up the haphazardly-arranged structures in that area that denied access even to a "wheelbarrow". This is the second time in the last four months that fire had devastated the area, which government intends to relocate the residents, whose activities are seen as the main pollutant of the Korle lagoon that was being dredged.


Most residents who had by then left for their respective jobs, returned soon as the heard the news on the airwaves, but there was little they could do to salvage their belongings because of the fierce fire.


As the GNA went about, it came across a body burnt beyond recognition.


Residents identified the body as that of a male who had taken medicine and was fast asleep when the fire started.