Tears Flows for Dansoman Fire Victims

“I never knew the power and reality of death until it hit my family. It is hard to accept your sudden death, my dearest Linda, especially when I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.”

“…Death, O death, an enemy of mankind, an enemy who visited me on 19th August of 2018. It took away my wife, my nuclear family, my in-law and my niece.”

These were the words of distraught Pastor Ato Kessie, the Dansoman District Pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church to his family who perished in a freak fire outbreak last week.

In a tribute at a joint Burial Service at the Methodist University College, yesterday the man of God said he has been shattered by the tragic incident.

“Linda your death has made me sit down and to reflect; it has made me put things into perspective. I wish you can hear me, but you cannot,” he said.

The tragedy struck at Akokofoto, a suburb of Accra in Dansoman, when the storey building apartment Linda Kessie, 31; Jason Kessie, a three-week-old baby, Jaden Kessie,4 lived caught fire.

Two other persons, Madam Grace Ampah, 65, mother-in-law of the pastor and Precious Pokuah, the nine-year-old niece of the pastor were also killed by the inferno.

The Pastor’s family were reportedly trapped by the security burglar proof at the entrance of their room and could not run out of the house while the fire raged on.

Co-tenants claim the shouts four help by the deceased persons kept fading until they perished in the early morning blaze near the Wesley Grammar Senior High school in Dansoman.

Eyewitness said efforts to mobilize some residents to help free the deceased were unsuccessful.

Fire fighters said they received a distress call around 6:30 am and quickly rushed to the scene, but had to, as a result of the intensity of fire, call for support to douse the fire.

They Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) officials explained that the cause of fire is still unknown and that the victims were already dead when they entered the room.

The family have been buried at the Gbawe Cemetery also in Accra.

Present at the service were family members, sympathizers including politicians such as the Metropolitan Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Mohammed Adjei Sowah, and his predecessor Alfred Oko Vanderpuiye.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson