A residential storey building with about 10 bedrooms and three vehicles, including a gas tanker were destroyed by fire on Wednesday after a gas filling station caught fire at Asufufu near Sunyani in the Bono Region.

The incident happened around 8 p.m. after a taxi cab caught fire at a time when an attendant of the gas station was filling the fuel tank of the taxi.

According to sources, the fire spread and engulfed the gas tanker and the other vehicles, which were at the fuel station.

GNFS intervention

A swift intervention by personnel from the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) helped to prevent the fire from spreading to other areas.

It took the GNFS personnel about three hours to bring the fire under control.

The Bono Regional Commander of the GNFS, ACFO Olivia Ayem, told journalists, “Our initial assessment has revealed that the gas tanker was discharging its content while the attendant of the station was at the same time dispensing gas into the taxi cab which should not be so."

ACFO Ayem said the command was yet to investigate the claim to ascertain whether that was the cause of the fire.

She said the tanker driver and the gas station attendant were supposed to have consulted officials of the GNFS to supervise the discharging process.

“We were not consulted, we don’t know why, but we could have doused off the fire at its initial state,” she said.

Sanctions

For his part, the Bono Regional Manager of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Mr Kwadwo Odarno Appiah, who visited the scene, said his outfit was also conducting its investigation.

Mr Appiah said some of the gas and fuel stations had been ignoring several safety measures during their discharging and filling processes.