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Fire guts BOST’s Buipe Depot …36,000 litres of fuel lost

Thirty-six thousand litres of petrol worth GH194, 760 have been lost in the fire that razed the truck park of the Buipe Depot of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) in the Savannah Region last Friday.

They were loaded in two out of four Bulk Road Vehicles (BRVs), belonging to the Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) and BF Energy, which were damaged in the late evening incident.

Additionally, three persons sustained various degrees of injuries in the inferno.

A statement signed and issued by Adjei Marlick, BOST Head of Corporate Communications and External Affairs in Accra on Saturday, January 4, said the cause of the fire had not been ascertained yet but investigations were underway.

The Buipe depot is the central fuel holding point of BOST serving the Savannah, North-East, Upper East and Upper West regions and receives products through river barges (via the Volta Lake) and through BRVs loaded from the Accra Plains depot of BOST.

According to the statement, it took a combined force of the depot technical staff and fire officers from the Damongo and Tamale Fire Stations to control the fire around 10 p.m.

It said two of the damaged vehicles contained 36,000 litres of diesel (AGO) and 36,000 litres of petrol (PMS) respectively but the diesel (AGO) was intact though the truck was damaged.

“ In line with our Standard Operating Procedures, (SOPs), trucks loaded with products for distribution to OMCs are not supposed to park within the premises of the depot”, it explained.

The statement assured that despite the volume of products destroyed in the incident, supply in the northern regions and the general operations of BOST would not be negatively affected as fuel stocks for the northern regions and Ghana as a whole was intact.

Meanwhile Yakubu Abdul-Majeed, reports from Buipe in Central Gonja that the three injured persons had been identified as Mr Ibrahim Musah, Mohammed Karim and Mohammed Tahiru.

They were rushed to the Buipe Health Centre initially but one of them, said to be in critical condition was referred to the Tamale Teaching Hospital for treatment.

This was made known when the Savannah Regional Minister, Mr Ibrahim Salifu visited the accident scene yesterday to ascertain the situation.

Local officials of the depot said that but for the timely intervention of the firefighters from the depot and national fire service personnel from Tamale and Damongo, destruction would have been immeasurable.

According to the officials, the firefighters managed to halt the flames from extending to the main facility. 

The Regional Minister impressed upon the fire officers to work hard to establish the cause of the fire to prevent future occurrence and assured that his outfit would support efforts to protect the depot from such disasters.

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