20100622
africanews

Thirty-five bodies have so far been retrieved from floodwaters across the West African nation, Ghana, by volunteers and rescue workers who described the havoc after Sunday's downpour as the worst flood disaster in country's recent history. The rains were recorded around the capital, Accra, and the central region of the country.

Averaging 24 millimetres (mm) in Accra, 50.1mm and 50.7mm in Tema and Ashaiman respectively and 84.7mm in Pokuase, the volume of the downpour came nowhere near last year’s record figure of 313 mm registered at Kaneshie, according to officials of the Meteorological Agency.

Officials of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), however, described its tragic aftermath as the worst flood disaster in the country’s recent history.

By Monday, the rescue teams had retrieved 17 bodies from the floods at Ashaiman, two in Tema, one at Dawhenya, four at Nmai Dzorn and 11 in Agona Nyarkrom in the Central Region.

NADMO officials also confirmed that the rains had caused extensive damage to movable and immovable property at the affected areas and beyond and left hundreds of residents in Ashaiman, Kpone and Dawhenya all in the Tema metropolis, displaced.

Out of the 11 people who died in Nyarkrom in two separate incidents during the rains, seven drowned in the Punu River on the outskirts of the town around 11 a.m. last Sunday when their Hyundai Grace Mini bus with registration number CR 522-10 was swept into the river which had overflown its bank, reports Samuel Kyei-Boateng of the Daily Graphic.

Six of the bodies were retrieved and identified as Kweku Agbede, 47, Kwame Ocran 22, Alhaji Bella, Afua Saawah, 52, Charlotte Incoom, 22, Esi Abban, 32.

All the deceased except Alhaji Bella were passengers who were trapped in the vehicle.

Alhaji Bella, who went to the scene in an attempt to rescue some of the trapped people in the bus, ended up getting drowned in the process.

Divers, however, managed to rescue seven of the passengers on board the bus.