Fire destroys Baron Distilleries • Causes death of woman

Pg 41. March 24/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho
A middle-aged casual worker, Ms Janet Antwi of Baron Distilleries, which produces alcoholic beverages at Oyibi, Near Dodowa, was burnt beyond recognition when the production unit of the company caught fire.
The fire which destroyed the entire structure of the production section, including chemicals and other alcoholic beverages, running into millions of Ghana cedis, started around 9 a.m. last Wednesday.The fire was suspected to have been caused by a gas leakage at the cleaning section where Ms Antwi was working.
It took about seven hours for four fire tenders from the Madina, Trade Fair, the Industrial Area and the Headquarters of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) to bring the fire under control.
According to the Ga East Divisional Commander of the GNFS, Mr Victor Godwill, the intensity of the fire was one of the worse that had been experienced in the capital.
He said the fire became more intense as drums of alcoholic beverages burst into flames, and that they had to bring in trucks of sand to fight the fire so that it did not spread to nearby structures.
He said but for the timely intervention of his men, the fire would have gutted the new site of the factory where the bottling of finished products took place, about a hundred meters away from the production unit.
According to Mr Godwill, investigations so far conducted showed that a gas cylinder which was normally used to melt oil in some of the bottles that were being cleaned leaked and got into contact with the alcohol, which sparked off the fire, leading to the death of Ms Antwi who was then working on the bottles.
It was observed that although the fire in the main production unit was brought under control, it was still intense in a 40-footer container in which some of the raw alcohol was stored.The firemen therefore had to isolate it from the main yard.