Kantamanto fire on January 3, 2025
Kantamanto fire on January 3, 2025

Kantamanto fire: Politicians must be blamed

On March 16, 2023, I published a feature captioned, “Market fires are preventable – assemblies must sit up”.

In that article, stated explicitly that fire prevention is a shared responsibility, and if indeed market fires are to be prevented, then a big responsibility lay on the shoulders of the custodians of our markets, the assemblies. 

It is a must that the assemblies complement the efforts of the Fire Service to end or reduce the market fires in the country.

After the first market fire at Makola in 1992, which caused extensive damage to the Makola market, where wares running into millions of cedis were destroyed that year, the Fire Service constituted Market Fire Prevention teams.

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They were responsible for fire safety awareness and education in the markets, conducting risk assessments and market patrols in all the markets.

These annual risk assessment reports were submitted to the local assemblies to implement the recommendations but the reports only gather dust on their shelves.

Until 2013, after a series of preventable fire outbreaks on our markets across the country, the Government engaged the services of experts from the US to investigate the causes of these perennial fire outbreaks.

Expectations were very high that the work of forensic investigators was going to perform the magic to serve as the blueprint to deal with fire-related issues on the markets. But it is one thing prescribing the medicine and another, administering it.

The assemblies once again failed to implement the recommendations from the forensic experts (which were replicates of those submitted yearly) to the assemblies by the local Fire Teams.

It is clear that until the custodians of the markets, whose interests are not in the maintenance but revenue collection, do need reorganisation of the markets into well-defined structures, the infernos would continue to ravage our markets, like what recently happened at the Kantamanto market where the Fire Service did all that they could, yet, could not salvage a single cloth or material let alone a structure.

Kantamanto before

Unfortunately, Kantamanto Market, like any other market in developing economies, does not have well-planned and proper layouts, so it is congested.

Anytime fire breaks out in this market, it spreads very rapidly and becomes very difficult for fire tenders to get access to manoeuvre for firefighting. 

Kantamanto Market has no Fire Post manned by fire personnel which is a requirement and a must.

The assemblies failed to ensure segregation of occupancy, that is, similar items should be sold at designated locations and highly flammable substances should be separated from other combustibles.

Routine checks and critical assessment at Kantamanto market indicate that it has no fire protection mechanisms and facility, hence, has safety lapses, including, obstruction of access routes to the market, non-availability of adequate source of water for firefighting.

It also has a very high reckless use of sources of ignition, electricity and naked fire. Again, there are no fire detection and warning systems and relevant firefighting equipment in Kantamanto, not forgetting indiscriminate cooking and setting of fires.

Equally offensive and criminal are mobile fufu vendors seen carrying embers, operating within the markets, these flaming embers may be blown onto combustible materials and ignite them.

Add the foregoing to indiscriminate cooking and setting of fires at undesignated areas of our market; hanging over-aged electrical wires and circuits all over every structure with amateur electricians tempering with electrical circuits and indulging in illegal connections; heaters and LPG and other similar gadgets which have the potential of causing fires were all in use in the market.

No justification

Let us get things clear here, when these accusations are put to the assemblies, the itinerants argue that government funding is not forthcoming ... that the District Assemblies Common Fund is either unduly delayed or they come in trickles.

One may ask, where do those market tools, taxes, rates and fines go to? Who manages them? And itinerant fufu sellers with embers, are there no legislations or bylaws to stop them?

Doom’s day

So pathetic was the recent Kantamanto fire that many traders were at home weeping, wailing and counting their losses. This is because many of these traders and business persons were in the yuletide celebration mood only to be buffeted with this bad news.

Indeed, several persons who had gone for loans to boost their businesses did not know what to do with themselves.

It was therefore not surprising when a trader out of pain accused the Fire Service of fighting the fire with petrol instead of water.

This trader might be very right in expressing her painful opinion based on her observation that the more firefighters are fighting the fire, the more it is spreading.

No condemnation for fighters

Nobody, absolutely nobody has the moral justification to blame the firefighters; they have done their best with the circumstances fronting them, although their best might not be best enough.

They have exhibited the type of training they received. 

How do you expect a firefighter trained for three months to stand the test of firefighting especially the mixed cargo nature of fire they were faced with?

Yes, such a fire is fought with Bombers and Helicopters not hand held branches. Definitely, these fires are not meant for local ill-equipped firefighters.

The writer is the Oti Regional Fire Commander of the Ghana National Fire Service, Dr Assistant Chief Fire Officer I (ACFO l).

E-mail: princebillyanaglate@gmail.com

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