PHOTO: Mother and 4 children killed by fire

A mother and her four children, including a set of twins, at Kwabreim, a suburb of Ejisu in the Ashanti Region, were killed yesterday in a fire that gutted their house.

The fire, which ravaged half of the six-bedroom building, also destroyed property and left two other co-tenants with minor injuries. It started around 1:30 am.

According to eyewitnesses, Madam Akua Afriyie, 55; her 13-year-old twins, Alpha and Omega; and six-year-old Gloria Tawia died in the fire.  The four bodies have been deposited at the Juaben Hospital morgue.

In his bid to save his mother and the three siblings from the raging fire, 26-year-old Victor Siribuo was not fortunate, as the fire engulfed him also. He died later from his wounds at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).

Cause of fire unknown

The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but neighbours suspected a leakage in an LPG gas cylinder because, according to them, they first heard of a loud explosion followed by the fire.

Although there was a fire station about five minutes’ drive from the scene of the incident, the firefighters had to call for help from their colleagues in  Kumasi because their fire engine had developed a fault and had been sent to Kumasi just last Friday.

When the Daily Graphic team got to the scene of the fire, the entire area had been thrown into a condition of shock and disbelief with majority of the people wailing uncontrollably.

But a visibly angry Municipal Chief Executive of the Ejisu-Juaben Municipal Assembly, Mr Kweku Afrifa Yamoa Ponko, could not comprehend the explanation from the Juabeng fire officers. He believed a timely intervention could have saved some lives.

This was because he said every Friday, the assembly gave the fire service station GH¢200 for fuel and surprisingly last Friday when the fire officers went for the fuel money, they could not inform the assembly about such a development.

Mr Ponko, who took the Daily Graphic round the fire station, showed the team a mechanised borehole, a tanker and standby generator the assembly had procured to ensure that the station was battle ready to save lives and property at all times.

-Donald Ato Dapatem