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.
