The president of the Ghana Institute of Architects (GIA), Tony Yaw Asare, has labeled the country’s approach to fighting the burning menace as wrong, detailing building construction measures as the safeguard needed against future fires.
According to him, the rampant fires reveal a fundamental flaw in the country’s prevailing architecture. Whether through thorough inspection, regulation, or construction processes, most buildings in Ghana are not raised to receive adequate fire protection.
“I think that we are failing at many, many, many levels,” he expressed the ills that plague the construction of buildings, and later contribute to devastating fire outbreaks.
“You know the law is such that when a building is bigger than 120 square meters, we are supposed to be making sure that an architect is designing”
Tony Yaw Asare, President of the Ghana Institute of Architects
Tony complained about the lawlessness that has become second nature in building in the country. He accused stakeholders of using unqualified architects as the chief cause of fire outbreaks and their accompanying challenges.
He blamed old building design practices as responsible for some of the fires that have occurred over the last couple of years, and predicted that further prevalence would birth more stubborn fires in the future.
Buildings by the expertise of unqualified architects, notoriously lead to the difficulty firefighters and first responders face trying to combat fires at the source, and ultimately the exacerbation of such fires to the detriment of society.
“The second thing has to do with the competence of the various assemblies,” he said, highlighting the inability of District Assemblies (DA) to properly bar fire outbreaks and enforce proper fire fighting conditions.
He added that “a lot of the assemblies don’t even have competent engineers,” to provide technical and expert knowledge in building construction for their people.
All these inadequacies, according to him, have contributed to the authorities doing the best they can regarding new buildings in their jurisdictions, even if it resembles corruption when they “come and write on walls and take some money,” to permit work.
“The other level which we are failing is that let’s find out how much money we put into making sure that we have fire hydrants in various settlements.
“I mean, if there is a fire at Adum, I’m not too sure whether even the fire hydrants there have been audited to check whether they are all competent”
Tony Yaw Asare, President of the Ghana Institute of Architects
He questioned why regular checks are not made to secure fire hydrants from being tampered with and to keep them service worthy.
“Sometimes even the coupling, how to connect the fire hose to the fire hydrant, sometimes it’s vandalized, people steal and all of that.”
Combatting the Outbreaks
Upon Identifying levels at which the country is failing to prevent fires and effectively fight them, he presented counter measures for immediate employment.
At the very least, Tony Asare asserted proper fire safety measures would ensure inevitable fire outbreaks are properly contained until accessed and extinguished by the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS).
He called for strict adherence to the law in raising respective structures to mitigate the challenge.
He cautioned against using quasi-architects in building construction, warning that if relied upon their judgment would lead to unavoidable fire problems.
“The architect’s training is such that they know who to contact and they understand the laws to be able to do this building”
Tony Yaw Asare, President of the Ghana Institute of Architects
To him, the use of seasoned and trained architects holds the key to protecting lives and property from frequent fires, and would give first responders and the fire service a fair fighting chance.
He emphasized the need for more resource provision to enable the District Assemblies to implement development control tenets. Without such interventions, it would be difficult for them to ensure the right structures are put up throughout the country.
He also mentioned plans to equip the authorities with resident experts to crown their building law enforcement efforts.
“We are discussing with the Ghana Institution of Engineering to be able to make sure that we get every assembly to have competent architects and competent engineers”
Tony Yaw Asare, President of the Ghana Institute of Architects
The country needs to drift from old building practices. That starts with making its District Assemblies competent for the task. He described this as “the first step,” to resolving the fire outbreak pandemic.
The Adum fire outbreak is the latest in a series of inexplicable fires ravaging various marketplaces and public centers in Ghana.
Tony Yaw Asare believes the country should get proactive in enforcing compliance with building laws and regulations.
All relevant stakeholders must be brought on board for standardized buildings to prevail, as that would prepare the grounds for effective fire response should they occur in the first place.
“So it’s a very convoluted thing. I think that we need to start looking at all these things properly,” he called.
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