Barely hours after a fire destroyed hundreds of makeshift homes at Asawase in Kumasi, affected residents have begun rebuilding on the charred site.

The fire, which broke out in the early hours of Thursday, August 27, 2026, destroyed an estimated 300 wooden structures, leaving hundreds of residents displaced.

The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) from Asokore Mampong responded to the distress call and managed to prevent the fire from spreading to adjoining areas, despite difficulties accessing the community due to the congested arrangement of the structures.

A visit to the scene by Adom News hours after the incident found residents clearing debris and salvaging wood and roofing sheets to erect new structures on the burnt land.

The community is largely inhabited by young parents and their children who migrated from northern Ghana to the Ashanti Region in search of economic opportunities. For many of them, the wooden structures were their only shelter in the city.

However, the attempt to quickly rebuild has been halted by authorities.

The Asokore Mampong Directorate of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) has ordered the affected residents to stop all reconstruction works.

The Director of Operations for NADMO in the municipality, Faruk Gariba, described the rebuilding as “unauthorised and premature”.

“We have seen that some of them have started rebuilding their structures, and I have ordered them to stop. The Municipal Chief Executive has not yet visited the scene to assess the situation and decide whether it will be appropriate for them to rebuild here or not, so they have to wait,” Mr Gariba said.

The cause of the fire remains unknown, although preliminary information suggests it may have started when a heater plugged into a socket was used by one of the residents to boil water.

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Mr Gariba said NADMO was yet to conduct a full assessment of the damage and determine whether the area was safe for reconstruction.

He warned that any rebuilding without the necessary authorisation would contravene the assembly’s regulations.