Fire destroys Royal Foam Company

About two-thirds of the production house of the Royal Foam Company Limited at Ayigya in the Asokore Mampong Municipality in the Ashanti Region has been destroyed by fire.

Last Friday’s inferno consumed all the production materials — mostly inflammable chemicals — stored in the rooms, and brought down the roof, the columns and beams of the production house, as some industrial machines were torched by the fire that lasted about three hours.

It took personnel from the Ghana National Fire Service (GFNS) over two hours to bring the fire under control, with six fire engines and a water tanker shuttling the three-kilometre stretch between the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the fire scene in search of water.

No casualty was recorded.

Challenge

The Ashanti Regional Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, Divisional Officer Grade III (DOIII) Desmond Ackah, said the absence of a fire hydrant at the factory hampered the work of the service in fighting the fire.

He said the service got a call about the fire incident at around 5:40p.m., and within five minutes, fire engines from the Regional Headquarters at Atonsu-Chirapatre were deployed to the scene.

He said due to the intensity of the fire, other fire engines from nearby stations were called in to help.

Mr Ackah said the fire service had to deploy 20 drums of chemical foam compound to contain the fire due to the flammable nature of the chemicals stored in the production room.

“By 8p.m., our men managed to bring the fire under control, stopping it from spreading to the other parts of the factory.

“Our major challenge was the absence of a water hydrant at such a factory, and the bad reportage from the electronic media made our work difficult,” he said.

Denial

He denied claims that the fire service arrived late at the scene, and that some residents and staff had to use sachet water to douse the fire.

“How can you use sachet water to fight such a raging fire?” he queried.
He appealed to the media to be circumspect in such situations and not to inflame passions and endanger the lives of the fire officers.

Investigation
He said the service had launched an investigation into the incident to determine the cause and its origin, and was hopeful that by the close of today “we should be able to find answers to these”.