An explosion at a petrol station in Ghana’s capital killed around 90 people sheltering from a storm early on Thursday, emergency services said, in the worst disaster to strike the West African state in more than a decade.<\/p>\n
The force of the blast gave few a chance to escape. People were burned beyond recognition where they stood under the station’s awning, or trapped in the charred wreckage of cars and minivans parked on its forecourt.<\/p>\n
The accident was caused by a fire at a nearby lorry terminal. Flames spread to the state-run GOIL petrol station via spilt fuel floating on flood water, fire brigade spokesman Prince Billy Anaglate said.<\/p>\n
“It was an explosive fire and so the people sheltering at the filling station did not have an opportunity to escape,” Anaglate said.<\/p>\n
It was Ghana’s worst disaster since more than 120 people died in May 2001 in a stampede at the national stadium during a football match, a police spokesman said.<\/p>\n
The incident exposed Accra’s vulnerability to storms, given poor drainage and weak infrastructure that has failed to keep pace with population growth after years of rapid economic expansion.<\/p>\n
Ghana’s meteorological service forecast more rain on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An explosion at a petrol station in Ghana’s capital killed around 90 people sheltering from a storm early on Thursday, emergency services said, in the worst disaster to strike the West African state in more than a decade. The force of the blast gave few a chance to escape. People were burned beyond recognition where … Continue reading “Ghana death toll rises to 90”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[4268,11879,1101,11878],"class_list":["post-19291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-explosion","tag-flooding","tag-ghana","tag-rains"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19292,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291\/revisions\/19292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}