Eighty Killed In Ghana Gas Station Fire Sparked By Flood

Floods shut down the capital of Ghana and caused a fire that killed scores of people on Wednesday and Thursday, as Accra’s antiquated, colonial-era sewers struggled to clear water from a city that has doubled in size over recent decades.

A moderate rain on Wednesday afternoon turned into a citywide disaster that evening, as roads, including the main boulevard that encircles the city of four million people, pooled with water, residents said. As dozens of people sought shelter at a gas station, the station flooded, then exploded, burning at least 80 of them alive in a blaze that firefighters worked overnight to put out, according to the state-owned Daily Graphic.

On Thursday morning, the seaside city,–a banking and data-processing hub for West Africa, –was widely inundated with water that had yet to trickle out through clogged drainage ditches. Residents described seeing cars that had been abandoned, or had been washed into gutters, and a children’s hospital had also flooded.

Accra is one of West Africa’s most popular bases for multinational companies, whose staff enjoy its sushi parlors, tapas bars, and American-style cineplexes, all recent arrivals here. But below the city, its infrastructure is flagging: Power has been off two-thirds of the time since January, because until recently, Accra received almost all of its electricity from a 49-year-old hydrodam that hadn’t been getting enough rain. Stoplights are frequently out, jamming up roads that haven’t been broadened. The port is perpetually backlogged, shippers say.

The city’s sewers are especially old. Almost all are open gutters about a foot wide, many of them dating back to British colonial rule, which ended in 1960. They haven’t been able to keep up: Accra’s population has doubled since 1990, the government says, with tossed-up neighborhoods blocking waterways. Floods, and cholera epidemics that follow, have been an increasingly seasonal occurrence here.

“Year in, year out, this continues to happen,” said Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, touring the burned-down gas station on Thursday, in comments carried by the state-owned newspaper. “Until we attack it scientifically and strategically we will continue to have this problem.”