Fire Guts SHS …300 Students Stranded

A ferocious fire has burnt a boys dormitory at the Oppong Memorial Senior High School (SHS) at Kokofu in the Ashanti Region, displacing about 300 students.

The inferno, which started around 11am on Thursday, at top speed, flattened everything it came into contact with in a frightening manner.

Within few minutes, the entire Assibey and Agyei Houses, both boys dormitories in the school, were down into ashes to the chagrin of school authorities and students.

Luckily, there were no human casualties as the dangerous fire started at a time that the students were said to be in classroom learning, eye witnesses disclosed.

So far, the exact cause of the blaze has not been confirmed. Some people are linking the fire outbreak to arson and others suspected electrical fault.

The students that were housed in the affected dormitories, lost all their belongings including money, clothes, books, footwear, food and many others to the fire.

The school authorities were forced to keep the affected students, who obviously looked traumatized, in classrooms and other already congested dormitories in the school.

Lucy Ama Ankrah, the Bekwai Municipal Director, Ghana Education Service (GES), said fire fighters helped to quench the blaze, calling for help for the school.

In a similar incident, www.myjoyonline.com reports that authorities at Accra Academy school in Accra have appealed to students to share rooms with colleagues in other dormitories following a second fire outbreak in two weeks.

The first incident this year was recorded on January 15.
It said a Board Member of the school has asked students affected by the inferno to remain calm and avoid going near the site of the incident.

He has, therefore, directed about seven hundred male students to join their colleagues in other dormitories.
The Board Member further explained that the school will replace all lost items belonging to the students.
He made this announcement when the students were assembled at Nash Park on campus for briefing.

“We know how traumatic this is. It is why we have assembled you people here to talk to you. We understand this is traumatic and scary. We are trying to find out what the cause of the fire is and we will get to know it,” he said.

One of the students said he had some money and property gutted in the blaze.

“The fire started at about 7:30 pm. Those of us who had our property burnt are very upset. We don’t know how the fire started. We were all at prep. All we heard was our dormitory was on fire. I lost GHS400, boots, jerseys and everything else,” the student said.

He also disclosed that “we have been assigned different hall so we will spend the night there.”