At 4:13 p.m. a domestic fire broke out at Dohinaa Yili in Tamale. The fire tender, leaving the Regional Headquarters Fire Station with siren and lights on, should have reached the scene in about six minutes, a window that can mean the difference between containment and destruction. Instead, the vehicle was held up for roughly 20 minutes by traffic between Aboabo, the library traffic light and the narrow turn leading to Dohinaa Yili.
Commercial tricycles swerved without signalling, taxis stopped mid‑road to pick passengers, and private cars were parked carelessly as owners shopped. Even as the siren wailed, drivers and riders failed to give way. “We were inside the tender, shouting through the public address system, ‘Please give way.’ But drivers and riders just closed their ears to the loud noise,” a fire officer said. “Our siren was crying, but Tamale was not listening.”
By the time the fire tender squeezed through the congestion, the rooms had been gutted. Residents could only watch as mattresses, school uniforms and other belongings were consumed. Neighbours formed a human chain, passing buckets of water, but the blaze spread faster than the water could be carried.
When the tender finally arrived, frustration turned towards the firefighters. “They insulted us. They said we were late, we were useless,” the officer recounted. “But we showed them our time. We left the station at 4:13 p.m. We were held in the Central Market traffic for about 20 minutes with the siren on. If the road had given way, we could have saved those rooms.”
The incident highlights a persistent challenge for the Ghana National Fire Service and the National Ambulance Service: road users do not consistently respond to emergency sirens and fail to clear the way. Ghana’s Road Traffic Regulations, 2012, require giving way to emergency vehicles with sirens and flashing lights, yet enforcement remains inadequate around Dohinaa Yili, Kalpohin, Lamashegu and Sagnarigu.
More than 15 years after a similar ambulance incident in 2006, the situation has not improved. The fire at Dohinaa Yili was eventually extinguished, but the lesson is stark: in an emergency, the danger is not only the fire or illness, but also the struggle to get help to those who need it. Giving way to an emergency siren is not a courtesy; it can be the difference between life and death.
