Bawdie Community Center collapses after heavy rainfall

Correspondence from Northern Region

Heavy rainfall with a storm on Wednesday afternoon completely collapsed the Bawdie Community Center in the Wassa Amenfi East Municipality.

Community members wonder how a community center that was roofed about two months ago could collapse after heavy rainfall.

Information gathered by GhanaWeb indicates that the strength of the columns raised was not commensurable to the roofing trusses used as roofing frames.

The columns raised were too slim to carry the heavy metal trusses on which the roofing sheets slept.

A resident of Bawdie, Ebenezer Appiah who witnessed the disaster quizzed, "How can you raise these tiny columns for this huge building that can take about four thousand people?"

"Buildings of such nature need big columns that can hold heavy metals and roofs, and not these small ones," he added.

Narrating how the incident happened, Ebenezer Appiah said he was at the community center with six other people and some school children when the rain started with the storm.

According to him, "All of a sudden, one side of the building collapsed, so we all ran out of the place, but the school children were still there. We decided to go and get the children under the roof. As we were evacuating them, the other side also came down."

Another victim, Samuel Mensah described it as a near-death incident as they could have died if the whole building collapsed on them.

He noted that this is a community project which must be of high quality in order to last longer.

He urged community leaders to put more money into such projects to reap the benefits.