Traders, shop and store owners in the Sunyani Business District (CBD) enclave were in tears after fire razed their shops in the early hours of Monday.
The victims were left in a state of despair as the inferno spread to shops and stores, attracting scores of people to the scene.
Many of the shop and store owners were not at the scene when the fire started around 0800 hours.
However, those present managed to retrieve some of their items from the fire, which gutted the compound house that contained the shops and stores.
Achie’s Hardware, dealers in building and construction materials, was the worst affected store as the buckets of paints exploded intermittently in the full glare of the affected traders and onlookers.
When the personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service arrived at the scene, the fire had already intensified, but the firefighters managed to bring the situation under control.
Though the cause of the fire remained unclear, some eyewitnesses told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the fire might have emanated from a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinder that one of the shop owners was using.
The GNA learnt that there were no casualties.
In an interview with the GNA, many of the bystanders expressed concern that the firefighters had only a fire tender to suppress the fire.
“If they had brought two or three fire tenders, the inferno wouldn’t have spread to the other shops,” an eyewitness, Kofi Yeboah, stated.
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