Fire has engulfed an apartment at the Navrongo Police Barracks in the Upper East region, trapping a 3-month-old baby to death on her birthday.
The fire, the cause of which is still under investigations, began in the early hours of Sunday, sparking a strong wave of panic in the neighbourhood as efforts to rescue not only the child but also valuables worth thousands of cedis intensified. The wild flames ripped through the rooms, converting everything in the way into ashes amid rumbling noises of horror in the barracks.
It reportedly took firefighters about 45 minutes to subdue the wild flames. The baby was rescued and rushed to the Navrongo War Memorial Hospital but was reported dead shortly after arrival.
“The baby has passed away and has since been buried. I just returned from the burial site. What is most disturbing is the fact that today marks exactly three months that the baby was born. She died on her birthday. I just spoke to the father who is too bewildered now to say much. The mother has been taken away to a house near the COS Park by sympathisers. Five rooms were burnt completely. Nothing was salvaged from the fire,” George Pwadura, a freelance journalist based at Navrongo, told Starr News.
Public warned against socket overload
The Ghana National Fire Service has in the wake of the disaster cautioned the public against overloading electrical sockets with cables, indicating that the burden can spell more catastrophe.
“The public should do proper housekeeping. Every electrical socket is designed in a way that it can only carry a certain amount of load. If a socket is supposed to take two or three cables and you load it with seven or five, that means you are giving it pressure. That pressure can produce excessive heat. And the embers can result in fire. These are simple, basic things everybody should understand,” the fire officer on duty at Navrongo as of the time of the disaster, Sub/Officer Ebenezer Wondong, told Starr News.
He added: “If you are using any gadget and you are going out, except a fridge which you may need to leave on to cool your things, any other gadget should be unplugged. You can’t tell what can happen in your absence if there is no one else in the house.”
The cause of the tragedy should be known by close of Sunday, he noted, adding that the latest disaster was the second to hit Navrongo in two weeks.
