Six killed in Ghana fuel station fire, explosions

Ghana’s government yesterday promised action to tighten safety at fuel stations across the country after six people were killed when a tanker truck carrying natural gas caught fire in the capital Accra, triggering explosions.The fire and blasts in the Legon area of the city 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 another residential area of Accra, creating a fireball that caused five deaths and damaged a nearby school.“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.”Ghana National Fire Service spokesman Billy Angalate said the death toll had risen from four to six but warned it could increase further as more than 30 people were injured, some seriously.President Nana Akufo-Addo said cabinet ministers will meet on Thursday and will likely come out with a “comprehensive programme” and policy to prevent future 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.