Fire Service personnel at the fire scene
Bibiani in the Western North Region was thrown into a state of mourning last Thursday when three siblings died in a fire outbreak.
The sad incident occurred at about 10:30 p.m. when the house in which the little children were sleeping opposite the Bibiani Senior High School caught fire.
The deceased have been identified as a three-year-old boy, a two-year-old girl and a six-month-old baby.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known. According to some eyewitnesses, the children and their mother were asleep when the fire started. They said they heard some loud noise from the house and suddenly saw thick smoke and had to rush to the scene to draw the attention of the occupants to the noise.
“The mother came out and forgot to come along with her children. She rather picked her phone and started calling her husband who was not at home at that moment,” they claimed.
A resident, who gave his name only as Ebenezer, said the mother later tried to open the door to rescue the kids from the bedroom but could not do that due to the intensity of the fire.
“Later, personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service arrived and managed to bring the fire under control, but the children had perished,” he said.
“We even heard that on that fateful evening, the first two kids told their father they wanted to go to work with him, but he declined and asked them to sleep because it was late,” the eyewitness said, adding that the father collapsed upon hearing about the incident.
Their charred remains have been deposited at the Bibiani Government Hospital, while the mother has been referred to a clinical psychologist for counselling.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi