Ghana: One of history's deadliest bus crashes

This week’s bus crash in Ghana was one of the deadliest in history. 71 people were killed, and another 13 seriously injured, when a coach collided head-on with a lorry carrying tomatoes near the town of Kintampo, about 260 miles from the capital, Accra.

It was travelling from the country’s second city Kumasi to the northern town of Tamale. Investigators have said the bus was overloaded. It should have been carrying only 63 passengers. 

A survivor reportedly told police that the vehicle had brake problems. Another alleged the driver had been going too fast, and that he had ignored pleas to slow down.

Rescue workers had to use chainsaws to try to get to people trapped in the wreckage. There was anger about graphic images of the accident that were posed on social media, while Ghana’s president, John Mahama, went on to Twitter to offer his condolences. (See also my blogs of 5 January and 23 February 2010 and 9 February 2013.)

Store collapses

A search is still going on for any survivors in the Melcom store building in Ghana’s capital, Accra, 48 hours after it collapsed, amid reports of voices being heard from the rubble.    So far 9 bodies have been recovered, and 69 people taken out alive.

Officials from Ghana's National Disaster Management Organization have said the building had poor quality foundations, and Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, has said anyone found to have been negligent ‘will pay a price’.

A property developer who had been wanted for questioning has given himself up, declaring: ‘There is no way I will put up a building and do shoddy work.’  The president has declared the site a disaster zone and suspended his campaign for next month's elections.

Perhaps the deadliest store collapse in history happened at the Sampoong department store in Seoul, South Korea, in 1995.   Cracks had been appearing in the structure for weeks before it crashed down, causing the deaths of more than 500 people.

 

Football disasters

At least 22 football fans have been killed in a stampede at the Ivory Coast’s World Cup qualifying match against Malawi in Abidjan. As with the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, it seems that latecomers, anxious not to miss the start of the game, pressed in on those already inside the ground.

The stadium had recently been refurbished, but a wall collapsed and there was panic, with some reporting that police fired tear gas to try to control the crowd. The game went ahead and the Ivory Coast won 5-0.

Africa’s worst football disaster came in 2001 at the end of a local derby between two Accra teams in Ghana. Supporters of the losing side mounted a demonstration, and police fired tear gas. As spectators tried to flee from the stadium, they found many of the exits locked. A total of 126 people died.

The worst football disaster of all happened in Lima, Peru in 1964, when more than 300 were killed in a riot over a disallowed goal. See also my blog of January 13th.