A parent consoles her daughter at Moi Girls School after a fire killed
eight Form One students on Saturday morning. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
Barely a week ago, Mr Fred Ating’a bid farewell to his granddaughter as she reported for the third term at Moi Girls Nairobi.
But
on Saturday, he was among eight families that will anxiously wait until
Tuesday for the identification of badly burnt bodies in a deadly school
dormitory fire.
“Mothers will be given first
preference. If the mother is not there, either it’s the brother or
sister,” Mr Ating’a, whose granddaughter Eunice is feared to be among
the dead, told the Nation on Saturday evening.
This
came as police investigators sifted through the debris and questioned a
number of students as they tried to establish the cause of the fire.
The
eight, who were sleeping at the Kabarnet dormitory that housed all the
school’s 338 Form One students, were burnt beyond recognition and no
parent could recognise any of the bodies on Saturday when government
officials allowed them to view the bodies.
The
students died when the fire broke out at around 2 am at a section of
the one-storey dorm called “Extension” which, according to two
survivors, had the highest concentration of students.
SUSTAINED INJURIES
Many
others sustained injuries during the incident. According to Mr Felix
Wanjala, the CEO of Nairobi Women’s Hospital, at least 40 students were
treated and discharged at the Adams Arcade branch of the facility while
10 were admitted with two in critical condition.
“Most of the students have been discharged and only two had over 50 per cent burns,” Mr Wanjala said.
Bodies
of those who perished were transported from the school to Chiromo
Mortuary after 3 pm Saturday and parents have been told to go for DNA
identification on Tuesday.
From
our interviews with students in an effort to reconstruct the chain of
events, it emerged that most learners were woken up by choking fumes of
burning substances while others were prodded awake by colleagues.
One
girl who escaped the incident with a blister on her left leg revealed
that not all windows in the dormitory had grilles, which caused tension
as panicking girls tried to find which window to use.
“We
had to knock windows for exit because we had to look for those without
grilles. As I searched for an exit point, smoke inhalation made me
unconscious. But I came to my senses shortly afterwards to find that the
jumper I was wearing was on fire. I had to throw it away. My leg was
already hurt,” the girl narrated.
ESCAPE
“Other
students were shouting from down that we use a certain window. I went
there and realised it was possible to escape. Then I got out,” she
added.
Two girls reported
hearing explosions as the fire gained traction, and the way the blaze
moved from the ground floor to the upper one remains a puzzle
investigators will have to solve.
Regarding
the cause of the fire, Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, who
visited the school in the morning, said a team of detectives started
work immediately.
“We have the
government forensic teams led by the government chief chemist and the
chief pathologist because we want to get to the bottom of it,” he told
the learners.
National Super
Alliance (Nasa) leader Raila Odinga, who arrived at the school at around
noon, said he hoped the genesis of the inferno would be established.
“We
hope we’re going to be able to come to the root cause of this accident.
It is a big, big tragedy indeed. We’re told the fire started at night,
around 2 am; nobody knows the cause. We, at this moment, don’t want to
speculate. We really want to leave it to the hands of the experts to
investigate and tell us the cause of this,” he told journalists at the
school compound.
PROBE
The Council of Governors also joined calls for a thorough probe.
“I
call upon the ministries of Education and Interior and National
Coordination to investigate this worrying trend of fire tragedies in our
schools that had previously been contained but seem to be creeping back
to our learning institutions,” the council’s chairman Josephat Nanok
said in a statement.
Dr
Matiang’i said he will hold a press conference tomorrow to give an
update on the incident and to give guidelines on how this year’s
national examinations will be conducted.
He also said the government will offer support to the parents.
“I
would not like any one of them to be worried about the hospital bill
right now. We want to ensure the children are fine,” he said after
visiting students who are admitted to Nairobi Women’s Hospital.
According
to term two examination results posted on the notice board of the
school’s administration block, the facility has 338 girls in Form One,
287 in Form Two, 280 in Form Three and 261 in Form Four. Students were
in shock yesterday as parents sought to know the whereabouts of their
daughters.
Students were ordered out of their dormitories and were not allowed back in.
MATIANGI
“No
access to hostels today (Saturday). Just go home the way you are; your
property will be taken care of by the school,” an announcement was made.
Dr
Matiang’i ordered the school to be closed “so that we allow you to
settle down and come to terms with what has happened before you can
continue with your studies”.
Form Fours will return on Friday while the rest will come back on September 15.
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko said the county government would work with the national government to rehabilitate the facility.
“We
are going to partner with the national government and the school, and
as we do the renovation and the reconstruction of the dormitories, we’ve
learnt a lesson. We are going to inspect other schools, both private
and public schools, in Nairobi. We must have sufficient exits from our
dormitories,” he said.
A Form One girl identified as Deborah was among those who were relieved to meet their parents.
FULL OF SMOKE
“I’m
scared,” she said. “We were asleep. Another girl woke me up telling me
the dorm was full of smoke and that there was fire. I got up and
couldn’t find my slippers fast enough so I ran off. I took the stairs
and ran outside.”
Her father said he had heard the news on radio and had to rush there. However, not all parents had such reunions.
It did not help matters that police and the school administration kept them waiting, referring them to a counselling room.
“Since
morning, nobody has talked to us,” an angry father shouted at police as
other parents confronted officers at around 12.34 pm.
“How soon? Two hours, three hours?” another parent asked.
The
fact that a help desk had been set up by Kenya Red Cross did not do
much to calm the parents. “We are just being tossed around; being told
we’re going to be counselled. You want to counsel us and you don’t want
to give us the true position?” lamented Idi Masoud, whose niece is
feared to be among the dead.
MISSING CHILDREN
Mr
Ating’a, whose granddaughter is among those feared dead, said the
number of parents with missing children tallied with the number of
bodies.
As parents await the process of identifying the bodies, questions linger on how the fire could have started and how it spread.
One
emerging theory from our interviews with learners is that there was a
wayward student residing at the lower floor who had previously been
spotted with a matchbox.
It is suspected the student torched her mattress and caused the inferno.
There are concerns also about the exits at the dorm. A survivor told the Nation that learners at both floors had two exits. The back exit, she said, was unusable because it was clogged with smoke.
“I couldn’t even see where I was going. I was following people,” she said.
A
number of dignitaries visited, including Chief Justice David Maraga,
Thirdway Alliance leader Ekuru Aukot and woman representatives Esther
Passaris (Nairobi) and Sabina Chege (Murang’a).
Additional reporting by James Kahongeh
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