Fire service should not be your last resort – Fire Commander advises Ghanaians

Divisional Officer Grade Three (DOIII) Solomon Agyemang-Duah, the Sunyani Municipal Fire Commander has charged Ghanaians to call upon the Fire Service the very moment they spot a fire, no matter how small they think it is.

To him, the notion civilians have about being good firefighters is what causes fires to spread rapidly in Ghana only for the Fire Service to be tagged as incompetent.

His advice comes after the Sunyani Timber market was razed to the ground in the early hours of Saturday, destroying personal property and industrial machines running into millions of Ghana Cedis.

Divisional Officer Grade Three (DOIII) Solomon Agyemang-Duah disclosed that properties at the Timber market could have been saved but for the delay by those who first saw the fire.

Speaking in an interview on the Happy Morning Show hosted by Raymond Nyamador and aired on e.TV Ghana and Happy98.9 FM, Solomon said, “Information reaching us indicates someone first noticed the fire and instead of calling the fire service, he went to get his friends to fight the fire”.

On his accord, the fire had burned for well over two hours and that was when they thought it wise to call the fire service. “This should not be the case. The fire service should be the first point of contact when there is a fire. Citizens should not try to fight fires on their own without training from the fire service”, he advised.

Sharing some other problems faced by his outfit in being effective in their work, he charged citizens to also give them (fire department) accurate directions and locations to fires. “Firefighters are not given the precise location when there is a fire and we end up having to ask around for directions whilst the fire burns”, he admitted.

The fire at the Timber market caused extensive damage to quantities of parked lumber, finished products, plastic materials, and several industrial machines and equipment.

Although the cause of the fire is not yet known, some affected shop owners, partly attributed the fire to intermittent power outages that occurred in the area.