58 killed in Kenyan school fire

58 killed in Kenyan school fire
REUTERS

MACHAKOS (KENYA), MARCH 26: Fifty-eight teenaged boys were burned to death early on Monday when Kenya’s deadliest fire in recent times engulfed their boarding school dormitory in what police said was a suspected case of arson.

Local police chief Julius Narangui said a deliberate act may have caused the inferno at Kyanguli mixed secondary school near Machakos town 65 km (40 miles) east of Nairobi and the police criminal investigation service had been called in.

‘‘It is one of the worst things I have ever seen,’’ he said.‘‘The number is so high and they are all burned beyond recognition. There was a scramble but many people were trapped by the flames.’’

Machakos district police commissioner Hussein Dado said that many of the 130 boys sleeping in the dormitory when the fire broke out had scrambled to safety but 58 were killed and 28 were injured, many with serious burns. Those who died were aged between 14 and 20.

‘‘This is a ghastly incident which has never been seen in these parts,’’ President Moi told reporters at the scene.

Weeping relatives milled outside the blackened single-storey brick building some five km (three miles) from Machakos, as emergency workers picked through the charred wreckage of wooden furniture searching for clues to the cause of the blaze.

Earlier, hysterical parents searching for their sons broke down the gates to the school to reach the dormitory after the first police to arrive at the scene locked the entrance to the compound as a security measure, witnesses said. Inside the dormitory, a pile of about 15 charred bodies layhuddled in a corridor dividing rows of beds. ‘‘It is sad and pathetic. I feel so bad,’’ said local resident Judy Ngina.

Police said the fire, which began at 1.40 am, was the country’s worst school blaze and the country’s deadliest fire of any kind in recent times.

In August 2000, 17 people were killed when a runaway fuel-laden goods train ploughed off the rails and exploded into flames at Athi River station near Nairobi.In 1998, 25 girls were killed in a still unexplained blaze at a school dormitory at Bombolulu near the Indian Ocean Port of Mombasa.

Police said they were called to Kyanguli in the small hours after being told that the students had gone on the rampage, and were astonished to find instead that the building was on fire. Francis Ngunga, a teacher at Kyanguli, told reporters that at about 1.30 am a boy left the dormitory to report to an adult supervisor that liquid was spread across the floor.

‘‘He left the dormitory through the door it was not locked. When they (the boy and the supervisor) came back, they found the dormitory on fire and the door locked,’’ Ngunga said.

Police declined to comment on this version of events but said they were following up a number of leads.

Moi said his office would investigate the blaze in depth. ‘‘The door should have been open one way or another,’’ he said without elaborating. ‘‘It is terrible. It should not have been allowed that way...These children could have escaped easily.’’

At Nairobi’s Kenyatta Hospital, reporters saw two badly burned survivors swathed in protective gauze and attached to drips being rushed into the casualty department. Five other injured people were also admitted there.

‘‘We are doing the best we can,’’ said doctor Tabu Simiyu, adding the injured had burns to up to 90 percent of their bodies. ‘‘In such cases, the prognosis is usually bad,’’ he said.