A fuel tanker caught fire on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, after being involved in a road accident at Amanprobi on the Koforidua-Mamfe stretch, sending the driver and his mate to hospital with burn injuries and triggering a rapid emergency response from the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS).
The blaze broke out along a stretch of road that serves as one of the Eastern Region’s busiest commercial routes, causing anxiety among motorists and residents in the immediate area. Personnel from the GNFS were dispatched after receiving a distress call, arriving at approximately 10:00 a.m. and bringing the fire under control by 11:20 a.m. before fully extinguishing it shortly afterwards.
Divisional Officer Grade III Ignatius Kwamena Baidoo, Eastern Regional Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, confirmed the response timeline and said both injured men were promptly transported to Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital in Mampong-Akuapem, where they were said to be responding positively to care as of the time of publication.
The circumstances that triggered the initial collision have not been disclosed, and authorities are expected to carry out investigations to establish the cause. The accident did not result in any fatalities, and the fire did not spread to other vehicles or nearby structures, owing in part to the speed of the emergency response.
The incident occurred on a corridor that is currently subject to a major infrastructure upgrade. Parliament approved €150 million for the design and construction of the Peduase-Mamfe-Koforidua scenic route, a project that includes the dualisation of the Mamfe-Koforidua road across a 31-kilometre length, aimed at reducing travel time and vehicle operating costs along the stretch. Until that project is completed, the route remains a single carriageway handling high volumes of freight and passenger traffic, conditions that road safety experts consistently associate with elevated accident risk.
Wednesday’s tanker fire is the latest in a series of fuel tanker incidents on Ghana’s major highways in the opening months of 2026. A fuel tanker fire on the Accra-Nsawam Highway on February 14 killed six people and injured nine others after individuals siphoned fuel from the crashed vehicle, triggering an explosion that consumed the tanker, a bus, three saloon cars and four motorcycles. That incident prompted a public safety campaign by the National Petroleum Authority urging the public to treat any tanker accident scene as a restricted emergency zone.
