DPA/AFP/Reuters/Accra
A fire at a petrol station and flooding in the surrounding area left 76 people dead in the Ghanaian capital Accra yesterday, officials said.
A large group of people had fled to the GOIL petrol station to escape area flooding.
According to witnesses, the floodwaters swept leaking fuel away from the petrol station to a nearby house, where a fire ignited and sparked an explosion that led to an even bigger blaze.
The fire then spread to other houses.
It was not immediately clear how the house fire began.
It was also not immediately clear exactly how the victims died, with reports that some had drowned after being knocked unconscious and falling into the flood waters.
Radio reports said nearly 100 people were killed in the fire alone.
Interior Minister Mark Woyongo said he was aware of 76 deaths but refused to give final figures until separate death tolls from the fire and the flooding had been tallied.
One hospital said it had received 13 injured people.
Witnesses reported charred bodies at the petrol station and bodies of flood victims scattered on some roads.
President John Mahama visited the filling station and the huge drain next to it, from which bodies were being retrieved.
The floods had swept through several areas of the capital, creating traffic jams and power cuts and forcing some employees to spend the night in their offices.
Locals blamed the flooding on residents who blocked runoff drains with garbage.
Mahama described the loss of life as “catastrophic and almost unprecedented”, as he toured the scene of the disaster.
“Many people have lost their lives and I am lost for words,” he told reporters.
Opposition leader Nana Akufo Addo, who also went to the site, described the disaster as a “dark day in the history of the city”.
Some officials said many new Accra gas stations had sprung up without proper permits, but noted that the destroyed GOIL station had been there for years.
Rescue officials were working to clear the area and bodies were piled onto flat-bed trucks, covered with tarpaulin sheets, as police in high-visibility vests stood guard at the scene.
Ghana National Fire Service spokesman Billy Anaglate said more victims were being discovered during the salvage operations, making an exact death toll difficult to establish.
“If we begin taking any of those numbers we have gotten and we are working and we are getting a new one, we’ll begin changing the figures that we are giving,” he added.
Dozens of motorcycles were seen burnt and the fire is also thought to have engulfed a bus full of passengers that was waiting on the forecourt, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
The GOIL filling station is next to a large open drain that carries water from surrounding areas to the sea.
But like many gutters in the city, it was blocked with rubbish, causing water to spill onto the streets. Flooding is exacerbated by construction work in the city.
One witness, Edgar Wiredu, told GTV 24 television: “Because of the construction work, the whole of (Kwame Nkrumah) Circle was flooded.
“When the fire service got to the scene, they got stuck. They struggled to gain access to the scene.”
At least two days of rains have caused chaos in Accra, leaving many suburbs submerged and people stranded, as roads were blocked and cars were carried away in or upturned by the flood waters.
Already sketchy power supplies had been cut to some communities as electricity sub-stations were under water, said Communications Minister Edward Omane Boamah.
Boamah, who called the situation a “national emergency”, said that the armed forces, police, fire and the National Disaster Management Organisation have been deployed to help those affected.
“The general public is kindly advised to avoid fast-moving rainwater and areas they know have big drains. Stay on higher ground, where necessary, to prevent loss of life,” he added.
More rains were forecast yesterday and today, with storms coming in from the east.
Accra receives its heaviest rainfall in May and June, according to the Ghana Meteorological Agency, with a mean total rainfall of 131.2mm (5.2 inches) and 221.0mm respectively.
The petrol station tragedy was Ghana’s worst disaster since more than 120 people died in May 2001 in a stampede at the national stadium during a football match, a police spokesman said.
Ghana is one of Africa’s most stable democracies and for years its exports of gold, cocoa and oil made it one of the continent’s fastest-growing economies.
But since 2013 it has wrestled with a fiscal crisis and lower commodity prices, and growth this year is projected to fall to below the average for sub-Saharan Africa.
Police officers stand guard as rescuers work on the site where at least 90 people were killed in a petrol station fire in Accra.
