One person has been injured and is in critical condition after fire gutted portions of a housing facility occupied by officers of the Navrongo Central Prisons Friday night in the Kasena/Nankana East municipal Assembly of the Upper East Region.
The fire also destroyed properties worth thousands of cedis belonging to officers and other residents within the township.
Items including mattresses, electronics, kitchen ware and cash were burnt beyond retrieval. Some houses were partly burnt.
The cause of the inferno is currently unknown. However, it is suspected a mild windstorm that swept through the township minutes before the incident might have triggered an upsurge in voltage.
One of the affected officers at the Navrongo Central Prisons annex barracks , DSP Francis D. K Deku, recounts that the fire started at about 8 pm after they noticed smoke emanating from one of the rooms in the compound.
" it was at about 8 pm in the night when we saw smoke coming out from one of the rooms in the compound. so I called one of my colleagues to come and see but he was already there trying to switch off power. Just then, another room started burning too but that one was locked because the poeple in it had gone out. We called the fire service and together with people around, we were able to quench the fire from spreading into other rooms".
The fire consumed three apartments at the Prisons Annex Barracks with one completely destroyed. The swift response of the Fire Service prevented the fire from spreading.
ASP Alhassan Nyankpani who is the Upper East Regional Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service told Atinka News that he received a call from the affected officers Saturday dawn.
He added that he quickly rushed to the scene to access the extent of damage.
ASP Nyankpani described the aftermath of the fire as very bad and said authorities of the Prisons Service will go into talks on the next line of actions to take to assist victims.
Ghana | atinkaonline.com | Senyalah Castro Cazo
