Fire razes health facility at Jamestown

Fire has ravaged the Cathedral Clinic and Laboratory Limited, a health facility near the Ussher Fort along the John Evans Atta-Mills High Street at Jamestown, in Accra.

The storey-building health facility was said to have caught fire around 17:00 hrs on Thursday.

When the Ghana News Agency (GNA) arrived at the scene at 1850 hrs, two fire tenders were on site to fight the fire. However, the tenders ran out of water minutes later and had to return to station for refilling.

Speaking in an interview with GNA, Divisional Officer Grade One Kofi Forson , Assistant Director of Operations at the Headquarters of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) said the Regional Office of the service received a distress call around 18:15hrs and quickly dispatched fire tenders to the site.

He said the Officer in charge of the dispatched team upon arrival and seeing the severity of the fire, called for reinforcement from nearby fire stations including the Ministry's fire station.

It took firefighters about 1hour 30minutes to bring the fire under control.

He explained that the presence of chemicals coupled with the building materials such as wood fueled the intensity of the burning.

Mr Forson said the service would on Friday, November 6, commence investigations to ascertain the cause of the outbreak and cost of damage.

He, however, noted that even though the service was yet to begin the official investigations into the cause of fire, he believed the fire may have started from the laboratory, adding that the extent of damage, although not yet known, was huge.

"What we noticed was that the concentration was at the laboratory side. We cannot say for certain that the fire started from that end but that is where we will begin our investigations from tomorrow," he said.

He urged the public to contact the service on the dedicated line to enable it to respond on time to avert massive destruction.