Divisional Officer II (DOII) Ebenezer Yenzu, the Tema Regional Public Relation Officer for the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), has said the command is linking fire hydrants in the region to Ghana Post GPS addresses for easy identification.
DOII Yenzu, speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), indicated that the move would make it easy for new officers to identify and locate nearby hydrants during emergencies, to help douse fires efficiently.
“Our new approach is to identify all the hydrants with Ghana GPS addresses so that even if an officer is new in the region, they can pick the coordinate to send them directly to it, so that generations to come will be able to identify such hydrants,” he said.
He explained that often, transferred and newly recruited officers to a region faced challenges locating the water hydrants to aid their effective discharge of their duties.
He disclosed that the command recently completed the compilation of the hydrants and their re-visitation in the Tema Metropolis with the other areas in the command’s jurisdiction to be conducted one after the other.
DOII Yenzu said its monitoring discovered that the Tema Metro had 70 hydrants, out of which 16 had high pressure but six of them were low pressure.
Again, one of the hydrants had a leaking valve, and some of them were also found to be buried deeply under sand and structures.
He said the issue would be reported to the Ghana Water Company for repairs, and as end users the GNFS, would liaise with the water company for the work.
“So, we dig around the buried ones to check if they’re not sealed totally. There are some that people have even cast concrete over,” he added.
He advised developers against sealing fire hydrants, because so could be endangering the community and themselves, as the service relied on the hydrants to fight fires, stating that the water contained in the tenders get used up within minutes of fighting fire, therefore it was the hydrant that subsequently provided water for the dousing of fire.
“If we have more hydrants with good pressure, we don’t even need more appliances; rather, it’s water we need to fight easily. Without hydrants, we must travel far distances to access water to fight fire,” he said.
The Fire Officer warned that the country could build the most modern facilities, but without an effective fire cover, all could be razed down within a second, and reiterated the importance of leaving these water hydrants open for access, to save lives and property during such disasters.
GNA