Harmattan: Need to maintain high sense of safety regime
An intensive fire safety education programme aimed at educating the citizenry has become paramount.
This is because incidents of fire outbreaks have soared over the past few weeks.
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Now that we are in the season of harmattan, fire occurrences seem to be rampant, especially at marketplaces.
During this period, the weather is very dry and, for this reason, it is easy to have fire outbreaks when heat comes into contact with materials such as paper, clothes and dry leaves.
Last week, the Daily Graphic carried a story on its back page in which the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) had urged managers of markets to adhere to fire safety practices to help reduce fire outbreaks in the markets, especially during the dry season.
Last year alone, according to GNFS records, the country recorded 658 cases of commercial fires, which included those in markets, making commercial fires the highest among the incidents.
“Between December 24, last year and January 4, this year, the country recorded 243 fire outbreaks, and compared to last year, the country has started the dry season on a very bad note and if strict measures are not taken, the figures will increase and that means lives and more properties will be lost,” the GNFS stated.
Particularly in mind are our farmers, hunters and all others who use fire in their daily operations.
Following from this, the Daily Graphic would like to add its voice to the appeal by the GNFS and, by extension, urge the citizenry to do its possible best by adhering to fire safety precautionary measures, as well as desist from burning rubbish indiscriminately during the harmattan season.
We note with much concern that more often than not, many of the fire outbreaks that occur in the country are caused by human negligence and carelessness.
For instance, across the country, there are indiscriminate burning of rubbish or waste materials and the wrongful disposal of smoking materials, such as glowing cigarette butts and lit mosquito coils. There is also the poor handling and misuse of naked lights such as lit candles, lit matches and lighters, poor storage and handling of flammables and combustibles, as well as unattended cooking.
All these could lead to fire outbreaks.
How we even handle naked flames in our homes is very worrying. The use of gas cylinders is reckless and we hardly check to identify leakages before they cause harm. Sometimes people even put stones on the regulators to control or mitigate leakages from gas cylinders.
This is very worrying and a negative attitude which must not be encouraged, in the least.
It is important that, at all times, we must make sure that the cylinders and stoves are in good working condition to ensure that we do not cause any fire outbreaks at all.
As a people, we simply need to be careful, both at home and at work, while we desist from nefarious activities such as the misuse of electricity, and electrical gadgets and stop engaging in illegal electrical connections.
We are happy to note that the GNFS is rolling out an intensive fire safety education programme aimed at educating the people, schools, market centres, worship centres, places of work and farming communities.
While this is ongoing, we would like to entreat homeowners, residential developers and industries to liaise with the GNFS to get their workers trained in fire prevention and safety practices.
Though it is the mandate of the GNFS to prevent and manage undesired fires, as well as to ensure public safety in the country, the public, also, has a bigger responsibility to adhere to basic fire safety principles and maintain a high sense of fire safety consciousness, especially during this stark harmattan period.
It is only by doing the foregoing that we can have and go through an incident-free dry season devoid of fire outbreaks.