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Mr Kwabena Taah Korang, Tema Regional Fire Officer (RFO), on Thursday said his men and women were fully psyched up to prevent and fight fires that are capable ruining the huge commercial investments and industrial settings within the Metropolis. He said the service needed to create a safe environment for industrial and business establishments to have the confidence to operate and even increase their investments portfolio in the country. Mr Korang made the pledge at the launch of a Fire Safety Education Campaign Programme organised jointly by the Tema Regional Fire Service and the Tema Metropolitan Assembly, to create awareness among the residents, on the need to prevent the outbreak of fires. He said just a careless fire could end up in an inferno that could cause massive loss of lives and investments adding that that fire safety in commercial, domestic and industrial environments, was of paramount importance. Mr Korang said between January and June last year, a total of 147 fires were recorded in the metropolis, adding that properties destroyed were estimated at 2,404,000 Ghana Cedis. He said the losses incurred in a fire outbreak on the premises of one company alone( Obedru Fishing Company), was 1,920,000 Ghana Cedis, more than half of the general loss. Mr. Korang said 142 fire outbreaks were recorded between January and June 2009, in which 902,323.25 Ghana cedis worth of properties were gutted. In both cases, the RFO said, domestic and bush fires topped the list of outbreaks. He said, while domestic fires alone accounted for 54 of the 147 outbreaks from January to June 2008, 23 of them were bushfires. DO1 Korang said domestic fires scaled down from 54 last year, to 52 between January and June this year, but the number of bushfires for this same period scaled up from 23 to 33. He attributed the reduction of fire outbreaks from 147 last year to 142 this year (January to June), to the on-going intensive house-to-house fire safety educational campaign, launched in February this year. From 2007 up to date, the RFO said, the Tema Regional Fire Service, had trained a total of 548 fire wardens on basic fire fighting from 30 companies. Mr Korang said only one of the five fire tenders in the Tema Region was operational, adding that Ashaiman, Ada, Dodowa and the Tema Industrial Area, were without tenders. He therefore, appealed to organizations in the Metropolis, to assist the Service to repair the broken down tenders to forestall any fire disaster. The RFO called on the public to desist from raising false alarms �because whilst proceeding to a false alarm call, a real fire may occur and failure to attend to it may cause havoc�. Mr Robert Kempes Papa Nii Ofosuware, Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive, commended the Regional Fire Service for its sustained public education campaign. He said, in spite of the persistent education, there had been several reported cases of fire outbreaks throughout the Metropolis with devastating consequences, and blamed most of the fires on either ignorance or human error. Divisional Officer Three Jones Emmanuel Sarpong, Regional Fire Safety Officer, explained that the Fire Prevention Premises Regulation enjoined all business concerns to acquire Fire Certificates before operating within a premise. Nii Adjei Kraku II, Tema Mantse, and Nii Tetteh Otu, Kpone Mantse, who also spoke at the function, advised residents in the Metropolis to take fire education programmes seriously. Fire officers demonstrated fire prevention techniques to the public.