General News
Cape Coast: Collapsed building kills 83-year-old famous photographer a day before his birthday
Two elderly persons died in Cape Coast last Saturday when they were trapped under a collapsed building after heavy rains earlier in the day.
The bodies of the deceased, later identified as Obaapanyin Ataa Panyin, 79, and Opanyin Emmanuel Ankrah, 83, were retrieved from the building debris, which occurred around the London Bridge area.
Opanyin Emmanuel Ankrah would have celebrated his 83rd birthday on Sunday but he died a day before that.
He was a famous photographer in Cape Coast.
The two were pronounced dead by medical staff at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital where the disaster response team had rushed them.
Three others who were also trapped under the debris were successfully rescued by the combined team of personnel from the police, Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and voluteers from the community.
Old buildings
Cape Coast is an ancient metropolis, and, therefore, has very old homes, some of them stand dangerously but still accommodate families.
The Metropolitan Chief Executive for Cape Coast, Justice George Arthur, said all such dilapodated sturctures would be demolished to avert more disasters as heavy rains set in.
He said he had visited the collapsed home and other residential property earlier that morning, and had urged the occupants to move to safety shortly before the building collapsed.
The Central Regional Director of NADMO, Kwesi Dawood, said many structures in the metropolis had been earmarked for demolition due to the suspicious structural integrity of those property.
Two of them, he said, had been demolished already, with three others expected to be demolished in the coming week.
Mr Dawood advised persons living in low lying areas to seek shelter at high grounds.
Other flooded areas
Mr Dawood further indicated that the heavy rains left many suburbs of the metropolis, including Ola Madina, Nokaans, Flowers Gay, Pedu, Ayifua, PPAG, and Amamoma, flooded.
He said NADMO and the relevant security agencies would intensify education to ensure that disasters were minimised to the barest as the rains set in.
The Deputy Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, Assistant Divisional Officer I (ADOI) Fiifi Dadzie, said the outfit recieved a call at around 9 a.m. on Saturday about the collapsed building at London Bridge in Cape Coast.
He said on arrival at the scene, information gathered indicated that five persons were trapped under the collapsed structure, but two were successfully rescued by volunteer neighbours and sent to the hospital.
He said the firefighters, with the aid of excavators from the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly, successfully rescued three of the three trapped victims alive and rushed them to the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital for the necessary medical care.
