Generator may have caused Nakumatt fire four years ago

Fire fighters trying to put out the fire that gutted Nakumatt Downtown in Nairobi four years ago. A generator may have caused the fire that killed 29 people. Photo/FILE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

By Vincent Agoya

In Summary

• Danson Makau, a chief fire officer said he found the generator cap missing during an assessment of the scene
• He said there was a possibility that the generator which was providing power during an earlier outage had been fuelled while it was still running
• The witness presented his investigations to the Nairobi Chief Magistrate Mr Kiarie Waeru Kiarie

A generator may have caused the fire that killed 29 people at Nakumatt Downtown in Nairobi four years ago.

Danson Makau, a chief fire officer said he found the generator cap missing during an assessment of the scene.

He said there was a possibility that the generator which was providing power during an earlier outage had been fuelled while it was still running.

The witness presented his investigations to the Nairobi Chief Magistrate Mr Kiarie Waeru Kiarie.

Another witness, Mr Solomon Luvinzu, an electrical engineer, said a possibility of an electrical fault was ruled out after investigators found power gauges intact.

Earlier, a witness who said he refuelled the generator denied there was danger in doing so while it’s on.

Mr Gilbert Gathengi Gathima said he worked at the store as a maintenance crew and refuelled the generator as its fuel level had ‘‘dropped to 13 per cent.”

He said he manually pumped 40 litres of diesel into the generator while it was running and on being asked if there was any danger he replied, “there was none.”

Mr Gathima said the fuel was normally kept outside the doors of the generator cabin in two metallic containers. He said one of the drums was full while the other contained less than half of the fuel.

The witness said that after refuelling he went back to the packing section of the supermarket and everything was normal until 2.30pm when the KPLC main supply resumed.

“I went back to check the generator since power had come back and that is when I saw smoke rising from the radiator duct,” Mr Gathima said.

He said the duct afterwards started emitting flames and smoke was seen coming from inside the generator.

Mr Gathima said he notified a colleague and they attempted to fight the fire in vain.