Fire Service ready for harmattan fire

THE Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) has drawn up a contingency plan to effectively combat fire outbreaks that usually occur during the harmattan season.
As part of the plan, all regional fire officers have been directed to liaise with their respective district assemblies to reactivate all fire volunteer squads in readiness to respond swiftly to any fire outbreak.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday on measures put in place to check indiscriminate fire outbreaks usually recorded during the harmattan season, the acting Chief Fire Officer, Mr Albert Brown Gaisie, served notice that any individual or organisation that violated the fire regulations would be prosecuted.
The Fire Precaution (Premises) Regulations established under Legislative Instrument (LI) 1724 of 2003 empowers the GNFS to prosecute persons and organisations that fail to observe fire safety regulations.
On that score, Mr Gaisie said the GNFS would, from 2011, get tough with those who fell foul of the regulation, pointing out that the service would no longer compromise on its resolve to deal with such recalcitrant members of the public who continued to ignore fire safety precautions.
To sustain fire volunteer squads, he said, the GNFS had plans to institute incentive packages for them (squads) to ensure that fire outbreaks, particularly during the harmattan season, were contained.
He added that the service would soon embark on an exercise to direct organisations whose fire certificates had expired to renew them, and that institutions that failed to comply with the directive would be sealed off.
Touching on fire hydrants that had been rendered ineffective as far as supplying water to fight fires was concerned, the acting fire service boss took issues with the Ghana Water Company Limited, accusing it of sealing the hydrants in some parts of the country, thereby making it impossible for the GNFS to make use of them in event of a fire outbreak.
Additionally, he indicated that residents in areas where fire hydrants had been installed tended to use the facility for other purposes, including using them as an alternative sources of water for domestic and commercial use.
Mr Gaisie urged the public to desist from the practice of constructing buildings on the hydrants since they ended up getting destroyed.