BLACK WEDNESDAY...12 KILLED IN FIRE, FLOODS

Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Accra was not spared by the floods.

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu with additional files from other correspondents.

Thursday October 27, 2011.
For about 12 hours, many suburbs of Accra were submerged by flush floods; halting business activities and movement of people following incessant rains yesterday.

The incident brought along devastation with reports of 12 deaths including three people that were consumed by fire.

There are conflicting reports about the number of deaths in the floods. While some put the death toll at seven, others claim it is more than nine. Two deaths were reported at Kasoa, three at Awoshie, two at Circle, one at Lapaz and another at Achimota.

The police in Odorkor confirmed that five people died in the floods but their names were not immediately known.

Two people perished in Awutu Senya district of the Central Region where a 20-year-old boy his sister died.

Their mother was receiving treatment at Korle-Bu.

Furthermore, a 25-year-old student of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) was confirmed dead after a wall in her Achimota residence tumbled in the midst of rain. Her name was given as Abigail Opoku Adjei.
Another tragic scene was at Awoshie where a two-year-old boy, Bright Kofi met his untimely death during the heavy downpour.

Little Bright was said to have been swept away by the current at about 2am when his father whose name was only given as Owuraku tried to find a safe place to put him.

Parts mostly hit were areas along the Odaw river stretch including the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Odawna, Alajo, Avenor, Abelemkpe and Abofu, Christian Village while the devastation caused in other areas like Sakaman, Chabar, Mallam, Kwashieman, Abossey Okai, Kaneshie, Lapaz, Anyaa, Sowutuom, Kwashiebu, Awoshie, Nii Boi Town, Tantra Hill, Ofankor and Dome among other areas in the city is beyond measure.

Other affected areas were Dansoman, Alajo, Asylum Down, La, Latebiorkoshie, Chorkor, Kasoa and Agbogbloshie.

Thousands of people particularly residents in the affected areas have been displaced while the cost of damage runs into millions of Ghana Cedis.

Yesterday’s disaster got President John Evans Atta Mills to hit town to assess for himself the extent of damage.

He was accompanied by the embattled Mayor of Accra, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije and other senior government officials.

According to the Director of Communications at the presidency, the President visited Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Alajo, Dome and Christian Village before returning to the Castle midday to sort out “other matters”.

At the Kwame Nkrumah Circle young men particularly porters at Neoplan Station which was also submerged took advantage of the situation to do brisk business.

They helped pedestrians by carrying them on their backs for fees.

Owners of commercial motorbike popularly called Okada also made some profit as they took advantage of the situation to charge exorbitantly before carrying passengers to their destinations.

At the South Industrial Area, hundreds of people were stranded in the floods which many believe is the heaviest since 1995.

At the State Transport Corporation (STC) yard, travelers were stranded while the entire stretch linking the Graphic Road was submerged, making vehicular movements impossible.

Passengers at STC Yard, Neoplan Station, VIP Bus Terminal, Imperial Transport, M-Plaza station and others were heavily affected.

Several vehicles were grounded and long distance passengers had a torrid time reaching their destinations.

Many got flooded as motorists particularly, commercial vehicles had to offload passengers at unapproved routes.

Early morning workers were overwhelmed by the floods and many had to return home disappointedly.

Students were given a free day, but many had gone to school before the announcements were made. The floods made many roads in the city unusable

Workers of Vodafon Headquarters at Kwame Nkrumah Circle for instance were told not to come to work while Minister of Education Betty Mould Iddrisu asked school children not to come to school due to the floods.

At Alajo residents were on their feet until daybreak when the rains subsided and normalcy restored.

Some questions were raised about the quality of work on the drainage constructed by a Chinese company in the area. When the project was under construction it was thought that upon completion the woes of the people of Alajo during the rainy season would be over.

It failed an integrity test yesterday when it could not tame the flood which attacked nearby houses because of an inherent engineering challenge it posed.

At Odawna, pedestrians market and lorry station were submerged in rain water with severe damage occurring along the Odaw drainage and Adabraka.

Almost every container erected along the Odaw river was washed away.

The flood waters compelled the Odawna trotro drivers to abandon and line up along the Vanderpuije Street while their counterparts at Neoplan Station and other improvised the North Industrial road as their lorry station.

Ernest chemist branch located in the Odaw area was also hit by the floods, workers of the pharmacy shop who had come to work could not enter the facility.

People were also seen at the top of building as a means of shelter.

School pupils and students of schools located close to the Odaw drainage were seen returning home.

At Ablekuma, the floods virtually cut off residence of the area and beyond from the city.

The road construction near the Nsaki River compounded the situation and had to terminate their journey because the river had over flown its bank.

The National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), the Ghana Armed Forces, Ghana National Fire Service, Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and the Ghana Police Service were in action at various places but the scale of the devastation appear to have overwhelmed the security agencies.

In a related development, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) flag bearer Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo noted with “deep concern, reports of widespread flooding in areas of southern Ghana especially in fishing communities and towns along the coastal belt as well as many areas in the Accra and Tema Metropolis.”

Nana Akufo-Addo called on Ghanaians to support each other in this difficult time adding “the scale of the disaster is such that emergency services may not be able to respond effectively to all places at the right time.”,