Accra floods and matters arising
This week’s column is dedicated to the memory of the departed, those who died from the effect of the flooding in Accra and the raging fire at a fuel station at Circle.
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I am putting this piece together exactly one week after the bitter and harrowing experience some residents of Accra had to go through as they found themselves stranded in water, a gridlock, petroleum oil flowing in water and a huge inferno.
Several of our compatriots who have closed from work, were working or on their way somewhere got caught in the rain at Kwame Nkrumah Circle and sought shelter at the Goil service station by the GCB Bank tower. Unfortunately for this people, leaking oil from the station met a naked fire resulting in a huge fire that killed over 100 of the people seeking refuge from the rain.
Meanwhile, at other places in the capital and environs as well as other parts of the country, the huge floods were having their toll on other residents leading to deaths, destruction of property and general disquiet from the devastating effect of the rains.
This Wednesday dawn, as I write this column, I hear the rains falling outside and I am praying and hoping that it would not continue for as many hours as it did the last time (four to six hours) and also won’t rain as heavy as it did exactly one week ago. It seems that anytime the rains pour heavily, people lose their loved ones in Accra.
For many years, we have spoken about how the rains destroy things and lead to the death of people in Accra and yet we find no solution to it. There is always talk about removing the silt and other material that chokes big water bodies like the Odaw River every year and yet no action takes place just as there is no action on removing structures mounted on waterways.
Last Saturday, I was on Joy FM for the entertainment review section on Rhythmz A to Z hosted by Mamavi and together with the other panel members, Ken Addy and Clarence Amoatey, we agreed that the coverage by the media regarding the deceased in the fire and water was shabbily handled by most television stations and the print media.
There is absolutely no doubt that the coverage was impressive as almost every media house worth its name was at the place Joy FM’s Evans Mensah referred to as “ground zero” as well as other places the flood had hit hard to bring the news to their viewers, listeners and readers.
It is very difficult for journalists and broadcasters to brave the bad weather and terrible conditions to cover flood devastated neighbourhoods and even worse where fire had gutted a filling station and extended collateral damage to many other peoples while maiming and killing tens of people in the process.
However, I noted with disdain the efforts put in, strenuously, especially by television and print to ensure their audience have better appreciation of the state of affairs from the grounds and in my view, their efforts were a tad too much.
I am of the view that journalists should be circumspect in reporting dead situations. There should be dignity accorded to the dead and to the family of the dead and thus displaying dead bodies in such demeaning manner ought to stop. There should be responsibility and decorum in reporting news about the dead.
I listened to Peace FM’s morning show host, Kwami Sefa Kayi, on Kwesi Aboagye’s Entertainment Review and he spoke my mind. I had prepared my mind to speak on the same line of argument when he spoke about how his own UTV terribly reported the dead with no approach to dignifying them.
I said on Joy FM last Saturday that I felt that the only station that showed a bit of decorum to their viewers by the treatment they gave the dead bodies (they basically blurred the faces of the dead and didn’t show the gory images as other stations did) is Joy News on Multi TV and I thought that needed to be commended.
We must realise that as professionals, we cannot throw caution to the wind in every situation, regardless of the circumstances, and treat ethics shabbily. I think we blundered on that part just as we did in other disaster situations such as the MELCOM disaster, etc.
Social media was also rampant with photos of the dead and even worse charred bodies of the dead from the inferno at Kwame Nkrumah Circle. At some point in time I had to post on my Facebook to beg people to refrain from sharing such gory images on their timeline. This both traditional and new media were culprits of how bad the dead bodies were treated last week.
Moving away from professional and citizen journalism on how we reported the dead, I have to mention that the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) left much to be desired in their response to this particular disaster. Especially so was the manner in which they treated the dead bodies, in my view was worse than what the media did.
We saw images and videos of the dead being carted away in pickup vehicles and it looked very terrible in my view. There was no indication whatsoever of putting them in body bags or separating one dead person from another, just dump them all in one pickup and cart them to the mortuary. Holy Christ! Where is the dignity? We can’t even get body bags for the dead?
I think we need to do better as a nation in the manner by which we treat people who either survive or die after such disasters strike. The current manner by which we go about it is not what ought to be done by a modern society such as ours. There is the urgent need to improve on our disaster prevention and management skills.
Just as it happens anytime we face such flood situations, the president, the MCE of Accra Metro Assembly and other members of the country and the local government giving speeches about what to do and what would be done. We hope that some of these things outlined would be done to prevent such disasters recurring again.
It will be in order to commend the radio and television stations that swiftly rallied their listeners and viewers to raise funds and other relief items to give to the people in the parts of the city that were affected by the rain and the fire.
Joy FM was swifter than most others when it organised a relief effort to the Nkrumah Circle victims by the weekend. Food items, water and other essential items needed by the people worse affected were presented to them by the station and its affiliates. They need to be commended immensely for this speedy approach to providing relief to the victims.
Also to join the relief efforts was TV3 which launched a big fund this week to help purchase relief items for the affected in this disaster and victims of similar disasters in the future. TV3’s relief fund was a whopping GH¢10million and the biggest to be announced by any media organisation so far. This is very commendable and I encourage all who can contribute to this fund to do so.
Over the last seven days, there have been images on television, sounds on the radio and images in print that are heartbreaking. These are humans who have family, friends and work colleagues and yet the waters of the rain and the raging inferno had no mercy on them.
For those removed from it, this was another tragedy that has befallen Accra and Ghana, images of dead people. For others though this is beyond tragedy, someone’s sole breadwinner could be among and another’s hope and reason to be alive could be among those who perished. Very sad indeed.
The question is, how do we fix those problem that if fixed would mitigate the effect that any flood would have in Accra? How do we move beyond the rhetoric and political grandstanding to fix those issues? How do we implement the laws that seek to outlaw such things as dumping refuse anywhere and build only where it is approved to do so?
Simply put, how do we ensure that those who perished last week Wednesday and for whom the state declared three days national mourning till yesterday would not have died in vain? There is the need to relook our way of doing things right from the top to the very bottom.
This was indeed a massive disaster like we have never experienced as a nation before, but we need to take the learnings and improve on the things we do so we don’t sing off key dirges and shed crocodile tears to angst those who died and their living families and friends.
@ThGHMediaGuru