Executive mansion burns as lights go on in Liberia

MONROVIA, Liberia — Power was restored to parts of Liberia's dilapidated capital for the first time in 15 years on Wednesday, but the celebrations were cut short when the executive mansion caught fire with four presidents inside.

The leaders of Ghana, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone were guests of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to celebrate the restoration of electricity, a symbolic step in Liberia's emergence from 14 years of civil war, when the fire started.

Heads of state and diplomats moved to Sirleaf's private residence. A senior police officer said the cause of the blaze was unclear.

Looting during Liberia's conflict, which ended in 2003, shattered the West African country's infrastructure. Power cables were torn down and water pipes ripped up for scrap metal by fighters.

Sirleaf earlier flicked a switch draped in a Liberian flag to turn on the lights around a suburban clinic, prompting cheering from watching residents. Children who had never seen street lights illuminated watched in wonder.

"My last daughter does not even know what a street light is. When she saw it she did not want to leave," said Boima Dennis, 45, his 4-year-old daughter by his side.

Harvard-educated Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, promised when she took office in January that she would work to restore power to the seaside capital within 150 days.

It seemed a bold promise for the city, a hodgepodge of moss-covered ruins and shantytowns whose wealthier districts hum to the sound of fuel-powered private generators while its poorer quarters are plunged into darkness each night.

Foreign donors struggled to help even after the war ended: Technical assistance failed when equipment was looted and aid funds went astray at the hands of the corrupt transitional government that preceded Sirleaf's election.

Liberia's war was one of the most brutal in modern African history, killing a quarter of a million people and ending when warlord and President Charles Taylor — now in The Hague, Netherlands, on war-crimes charges — fled to exile in Nigeria.

The "Emergency Power Program" in Monrovia, which is also only just beginning to restore piped water, will initially power hospitals, schools, police stations and community facilities as well as street lights on main routes.

"This is what Mr. Charles Taylor could have done in four years, but failed to do so. Look, the lady has done something in six months," said William Tengbeh, 31, a car mechanic.

Sirleaf thanked the European Union and the United States, two major donors, as well as President John Kufuor of Ghana, who jointly switched on the power after his country supplied some of the streetlights and generators.