A devastating fire has swept through hundreds of structures at CMB Abuja behind the Cocobod office in Accra.
It is estimated that 350 structures were razed by Sunday dawn’s inferno.
Eyewitnesses attribute the disaster to a gas explosion.
“We just heard neighbours screaming ‘fire’ ‘fire’ and all of a sudden a deafening blast from the cylinder,” an eye witness told Media General‘s Emmanuel Samani on Sunday, September 17.
“But luckily we all took to our heels and no one was burnt, no one died. Only properties.”
A shop owner, Nana Boakye, said he received a distress call around 4:00am that his shop was burning.
He said he drove all the way to Abuja, where he found out his shop was burnt to ashes.
They are appealing to government for support.
The Deputy Director of Operations of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Kofi Forson, narrated that they had a call around 0504GMT and they quickly dispatched fire tenders from Accra.
“They got [t]here in less than 3 minutes [but] when they got [t]here the fire had reached its ghost stage,” he said, describing how they could not use any extinguisher to control it.
“In all, we used four appliances including one ambulance and now the situation is under control.”
He said it is too early to know the cause of the fire “but preliminary information that we have gathered is that there was an explosion, gas explosion”.