The level of negligence and swaggering incompetence that has led to the total annihilation of our medical supplies is staggering, and it’s an indictment on our way of doing things that heads are yet to roll for the circumstances leading to this disaster.

The Central Medical Stores in Tema caught fire on Tuesday, apparently because someone was burning refuse and it caught onto the building. Somehow the fire continued raging for well over 48 hours before the Fire Service were able to completely put it out.

The Central Medical Stores was the biggest storage facility for medical supplies in the country. It was razed completely to the ground, losing the nation supplies worth well over Ghc 300million.

The massive clusterf**k of events that led to this sad end reads more as a comedy of errors than anything else. The entire facility was not insured, basic fire safety measures such as smoke detectors and sprinklers were nonexistent, and when the Ghana National Fire Service got to the scene, it took them over two days to put out the blaze.

Now there could be fires that would be so powerful that they could raze for longer than this, but every indication points to the fact that lack of the needed materials led to the elongated life of the fire. In the aftermath, the respective spokespersons for the Ghana National Fire Service and The Ghana Water Company Limited engaged in an embarrassing public blame game, one insisting the fire hydrants around the facility contained water whilst the other insisted they did not.

Either way, the bottom line was that the fire continued for too long, ensuring the facility was virtually burnt to ashes by the time it was put out.

As mentioned earlier, the facility lacked basic fire safety measures, and for a facility of its size and prominence that’s criminal in itself. Worse, it wasn’t insured; which means the losses incurred would all need to be borne by the taxpayer, because whoever was in charge lacked the foresight to do what is second nature to every sensible individual, business, or organisation.

I lead with all these because to any rational person following the story, the list of culprits in this saga should be as long as Mohammed’s beard. We like to copy the West in many things except the stuff that really matter, and in any serious country after such an embarrassing fiasco heads are going to roll. People would resign of their own volition, too embarrassed to continue, or get fired if they prove a little too self absorbed.

Whoever is in charge of running the facility simply has no excuse to remain at post. The Fire Service showed all their inadequacies in performing their core functions, whilst the Ghana Water Company themselves are not any better.

The issue of keeping fire hydrants well stocked is not a light one, and an issue like this throws light on it and should lead to a more serious approach towards it. Alas, if no one is punished for such a grievous blunder, I don’t see the motivation for ensuring it does not occur again.

Looking at this chronicle of events, it was with increasing incredulity when I listened to the President during his visit to the site. Apparently the fire service and BNI are conducting an investigation into the matter, to come out with a report that the President and his administration would act on. According to him, someone should pay for what happened.

You are the President, who are you telling that to? We all know how things work in this country; there would be a long investigation, wasting more resources which would then come out with an even longer report. It would be shelved somewhere, then we all continue our lives like nothing really happened. Remember the world cup commission?

If he was serious about making someone pay, heads would have rolled already. Sometimes one does not even have to be culpable to be punished, just being the one in charge for such an episode to occur is enough. In this case though we have glaring mistakes, oversights, and incredible evidence of gross negligence; and all indications point to another disaster just being written off, whilst we gleefully go back to the status quo.