A Director at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Mr Morgan A. Brown has given a vivid account of circumstances leading to the burning of the entire building of the ministry.

He said the fire started at about 4 p.m. Wednesday from an air conditioner, but with the help of fire extinguishers, the fire was put out.

A technician, according to him, was called in to assess the situation and give expert advice. The technician, he said, advised that once the fire had been put out, he would attend to the faulty air conditioner first thing Thursday morning.

Mr Brown said ‘an hour or so’ later the fire started again, this time with such intensity that it became practically impossible to contain it, so fire fighters were called in.

Fire personnel who responded to the call lacked the requisite equipment to do a thorough job, and their spokesperson told the media they concentrated their efforts on stopping the fire from extending to other public buildings in the vicinity as trying to save anything in the fire-engulfed building amounted to sheer waste of time.

Asked what were destroyed in the inferno, Mr Brown said all equipment, air conditioners “and worse of all, the documents we have lost”.

Efforts had been made to build back ups for the institutional memory of the ministry but those efforts were yet to be fully implemented when the disaster struck, he stated.

The Director said though bitter, the disaster had taught the authorities a lesson which will not be lost on anyone as far as creating back-ups for essential files in all public offices was concerned.

He expressed the hope that ongoing consultation would yield results as soon as possible to enable the about 500 people who lost their offices to find places from where they can continue with their work.

Fire personnel, who spoke to journalists, were unhappy with media reports suggesting they looked on while the fire raged.

Firemen left with own devices

They said they had been incapacitated by lack of equipment, noting that if they had a turn-table ladder, the fire would not have gone beyond one floor of the ten-storey building.

Station Officer Seth Otoo said while there is a water hydrant in the ministry, it was also not working.

He however added that the major handicap was the lack of a turn-table ladder which could have enabled them to effectively fight the fire without fatal consequences.

He said the fire was finally brought under control around 5 a.m. Thursday, having probably raged for 12 hours.

Assistant Divisional Officer, Philip Ansah, said the nation will continue to wallow in absolute despondency and lose precious properties as long as it continues to neglect critical areas such as disaster management.

He reiterated the fire services’ capacity to put out the fire with minimal damage, had they not been constrained by obsolete equipment.

Mr Ansah said the only fire tender with a turn-table ladder of a sort was stationed in Tema and when it mattered most and the tender was called to help, the ladder failed to function – leaving the fire fighters to their own devices.

While the fire officers cry for tools, and staff of the ministry for offices, the nation has had yet another rude awakening to the moribund nature of its institutions and state agencies.

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