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Accra, Ghana | AFP | Ghana’s government on Sunday promised to tighten safety at fuel stations across the country after seven people were killed and scores more injured when a tanker truck carrying natural gas caught fire in the capital and triggered explosions.
The fire and blasts in the Legon area of Accra on Saturday gutted a liquefied gas filling station and a nearby petrol station, sending local residents running from their homes, as huge fireballs lit up the night sky.
The head of the Ghana Standards Authority, Alex Dodoo, said there had been eight gas explosions in four years, including in June 2015, when a similar fire and explosion at a petrol station in Accra killed more than 150 people.
In December last year, a gas tanker caught fire in the La Trade Fair area of Accra, creating a fireball that caused 13 deaths and damaged a nearby school.
More than 100 others were injured in May this year in a similar blast in the western city of Takoradi.
“This is a time for concrete action,” Dodoo was quoted as saying by Citi FM radio after Saturday’s incident. “Fixing it and making sure that it doesn’t happen again is a responsible thing to do.”
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– ‘Comprehensive programme’ –
Information minister Mustapha Abdul Hamid said in a statement: “At least seven people have been confirmed dead and 132 injured, out of which 64 have been discharged and 68 are still receiving treatment.
“An investigation has been launched into the cause of the explosion and shall be followed up with firm action to forestall future similar recurrences.”
President Nana Akufo-Addo said cabinet ministers will meet Thursday and will likely come out with a “comprehensive programme” and policy to prevent any more explosions.
“I would like everybody involved in the industry to recognise we will all have to make adjustments to be able to guarantee the safety and the security of our people so these things do not happen again,” he said.
But the OccupyGhana pressure group feared nothing would change once the messages of condolences and anger passed.
“One would have thought that after the June 3 (2015) disaster there would have been a massive clampdown on how filling stations are sited in residential areas,” the group’s spokesman, Nana Sarpong Agyeman-Badu, told AFP.
“We have not really done much or learnt anything. We all go back to sleep and the issue will come back up again, we will talk about it then go back to sleep.
“I am pretty sure in the next couple of weeks we will see back and forth — people going around shutting down filling stations — and then we go back to as we were.”
The National Petroleum Authority announced in May this year that LPG outlets would no longer be allowed to refill cylinders on site to prevent explosions.
