RAINS HAVOC HITS ACCRA (Front Page)

HEAVY floods in the western parts of Accra on Friday night claimed at least seven lives and caused massive destruction to private and public property after two hours of rain.
The names of the deceased are being withheld, while indications are that the casualty list could be higher.
Disaster managers described the floods as the most destructive in recent times, with the most affected places being Sakaman and Kaneshie.
The floods also washed away the bitumen on the main Kaneshie First Light-Mpamprom road and caused some of the vehicles caught in the rush-hour traffic to float and crash into one another.
According to the Deputy Accra Regional Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Christian Yohuno, the seven casualties comprised five males and two females. The value of movable and immovable property destroyed is yet to be assessed.
Personnel from the 48 Engineers Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces joined members of the Emergency Unit of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to offer rescue services to some of those trapped in the disaster,
some of whom were all-night worshippers at the Royal House Chapel at the Obetsebi-Lamptey Circle who were carried to safer grounds by the soldiers about 11 p.m.
Houses in low lying areas at Mallam Junction, Sakaman, Awoshie, Santa Maria, Odorkor, Darkuman Junction, Atico Junction, Mataheko, North Kaneshie, Mpamprom and the Obetsebi-Lamptey Circle were filled with water, at some places above window level.
About 9 a.m. on Saturday morning when the Daily Graphic joined a team of government officials and security personnel, including the Police and the Ghana National Fire Service, as well as officials of NADMO, to assess the situation, hundreds of residents were seen moving already destroyed valuables from their rooms.
Twenty-eight-year-old Kojo Ninsin, who said he had taken refuge on the first floor of the First Choice Hair and Nail Parlour building at Mpamprom, said at a point he thought the sea had broken its banks into the city of Accra.
He said he could not believe it was rain water and as it got more frightening by the minute, he could not behold it any longer and so he had to cover his eyes with his wet shirt in an attempt to pray to God to save the city.
Many of the affected residents whom the Daily Graphic spoke to could not believe the volume of water that filled their homes because to them the rainfall was not that heavy.
They were shocked at the volumes of water that rushed to their homes within a very short time and in their attempt to find an explanation for that, they ended up giving different interpretations.
While some gave Biblical interpretations ti the occurrence and talked about end times, others pointed at the choked gutters and buildings on water courses. A few also pointed accusing fingers at personnel of the Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL) at the Weija water treatment site whom they suspected to have opened the dam whose flowing water might have added up to the rain water.
To ascertain the truth or otherwise of that accusation, the team of government officials, led by the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Nii Armah Ashietey, moved to the treatment plant where they were briefed by the Station Chemist at the site, Mr Hadisu Alhassan.
Mr Alhassan denied any wrongdoing on the part of the company. Although he confirmed that the company opened one of the five gates at the dam for water to spill out, he said that had been done after the disaster, adding that even if it had been done earlier, the six inches volume of water that went out could not have travelled to the areas where the disaster occurred.
His explanation seemed reasonable because none of the communities around the treatment site got flooded as they had had been in previous times when the dam was opened.
In the company of the regional minister during the inspection tour were the Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Rojo Mettle-Nunoo; the Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Alfred Vanderpuije; the Accra Regional Police Commander, DCOP Rose Bio-Atinga; the Ga South Municipal Chief Executive, Sheriff Nii Otto Dodoo; the Greater Accra Regional Co-ordinator of NADMO, Mr Winfred Lomotey Tesia; the Director of Operations at the Police Headquarters, ACP Richmond Boi-Bi-Boi; as well as ACP Yohuno, the second-in-command in Accra.