Occupants including children escaped unhurt after fire gutted a seven-bedroom residential apartment at Nkontwima in the Tafo Municipality of the Ashanti Region.

The children and some adults who were in the house when the fire started at about 9 am on February 18 drew the attention of neighbours who came to help contain the situation.

Fire officers were later called in when the fire became intense and spread to other rooms in the apartment.

Narrating the incident to Citi News, Bremang Fire Commander, D.O 3 Selase Prosper Avevor blamed the cause of the fire on a deep freezer “which had most of their food items and was connected to an extension board and the socket to which that extension board was connected to had a fault which was being worked on. It resulted in sparks and because there were many materials in the room that was combustible, the sparks triggered and ignited the fire and because there were no gabbles in the house too, the fire quickly spread to other rooms in the house.”

D.O 3 Selase Avevor also indicated that the fire was able to cause that much damage because the residents in the apartment tried to fight the inferno all by themselves until it was too late to call the Fire Service.

“They were trying to tackle the fire on their own without drawing our attention. If they had called the Fire Service early, we would have been here to contain the fire.”

He advised the public to be careful how they handle naked fires and electrical faults and cautioned that high voltage-consuming gadgets shouldn’t be passed through extension boards so as to prevent such fire outbreaks.