[Photos] 40 school kids rescued after fire outbreak at Brisco, K'si

Fire gutted a building in the Brisco commercial area in Kumasi Thursday evening, destroying property worth thousands of Ghana cedis.  The swift intervention of the Ghana National Fire Service averted the blaze from causing further damage. It started from the Christ Cosmopolitan Incorporated Church and spread to a Day Care Centre housing about 40 children. Passers-by and some commercial drivers around the fire scene intervened to rescue all the children. They, however, failed in attempts to douse the fire as they could not access an extinguisher. Personnel of the fire service swiftly intervened to fight the fire from spreading to other shops and near-by facilities. An eye witness, John Osei, said the rescuers had to rush to save the school children after seeing a thick smoke bellowing from the school. “We are VIP drivers who work right here, so when we saw smoke emanate from the building, we are aware there is a school there so we tried to save the children. We were able to take out the students, they were about forty, and none of them was injured because we brought them out before the fire escalated,” the eye witness recounted to TV3’s Ashanti Region correspondent, Ibrahim Abubakar, on behalf of the drivers. Ashanti Region Fire Commander Joshua Nguah said the fire fighters went through a hectic time in bringing the inferno under control. He said there was a challenge in accessing a water hydrant in the area. “We had to put up all maximum effort to compress. The challenge was with water, the distance from here to the hydrant was quite a distance, coupled with the traffic, but that notwithstanding, we were able to get through.” Meanwhile, investigations have been launched to ascertain the cause of the fire. Source: editors.3news.com| Ghana