Burning building saved with sachet water

But for the ingenuity of residents and passers-by, a one-storey building at Taifa-Norway in Accra, with shops on the ground floor, would have been razed to the ground before the Ghana National Fire Service (GNUS) arrived at the scene.

The residents, after trying to fight the raging fire unsuccessfully with buckets of water, decided to pelt the fire with sachets of water, a situation which brought the fire under control before officials of the GNFS arrived.

However, the roof of one of the apartments in the building totally got burnt, and the fire started raging again when the residents stopped throwing the water sachets at it to allow the fire service personnel to take over.

The fire officials had a hard time in bringing the fire under control as there was no easy access route to where the fire was burning.

It took a while before they were able to gain control of the fire as they had to change their locations several times to get to where the fire was.

Some of the residents who helped in bringing the fire under control said the fire started around 8:30 a.m.

They said when they realised that their efforts to put out the fire with buckets of water was not yielding any results, they decided to throw sachets of water directly into the room.