A heavy downpour Saturday night at Gbulung in the Kumbungu district caused multiple buildings to collapse, killing a little boy and injuring two.
One of the injured is said to be in a life-threatening condition with multiple bone damages
The casualties were recorded during an hour and half of massive rainfall in the area which brought down houses on sleeping residents.
A resident, Razak Yussif said seven houses were damaged, one completely, housing more than 10 people. According to him, several properties including foodstuffs had been wasted with more than 20 people displaced internally.
“One man also, his leg is broken and his back and the neck side too”, Yussif told Starr News. “He is currently in the Juju man’s house and the two people have been sent to Tamale West Hospital.”
The deceased, Yussif explained, was killed after rescuers delayed in pulling him out of the rubble of his father’s falling house.
The Assemblyman of the area together with the local NADMO officer has since been in the area to assess the extent of the damage. Victims were still leaving without reliefs, said Yusif appealing for government intervention.
The Kumbungu district is one of the over thousand communities in the Northern Region found along the white river which is harvested at Bagre in neighbouring Burkina Faso and spilt annually.
The annual opening of the dam has become and a permanent nightmare for Ghanaian authorities with many experts now pushing for government to declare it a national security concern.
Since 1991 when the spillage caused a widespread deadly cholera outbreak, killing over 900 people, casualty figures have remained negligible until this year when the opening coincided with torrential downpours in the regions.
34 people, including four pregnant women and little children, have died this year, and over 52,000 displaced; several farmlands have submerged, dealing a heavy blow to the government initiative to boost agricultural production.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Eliasu Tanko
