Testimonies by teachers at the Hillside Endarasha Academy during a public inquest into the dormitory fire that claimed the lives of 21 boys on September 5, 2024 have exposed gaps in safety preparedness and emergency response at the school.
While giving their testimonies before Senior Resident Magistrate Mary Gituma, the school’s Headteacher Joseph Macharia and his Deputy Nahashon Kariuki admitted that as part of the management of the school, did not know the institution required an early warning system, a set of disaster risk reduction strategies as well as crises response teams to respond to emergency situations.
Surprisingly, they also told the court that despite teaching in a boarding school for more than a decade, they were vaguely conversant with the School Safety Standards Manual by the Ministry of Education that details bed spacing and capacity limits for school dormitories with the headteacher revealing that the school only acquired a copy of the manual after the tragedy.
During the inquest, which was attended by the parents of the victims, it also emerged that the first responders who included members of the neighboring community and teachers arrived at the scene to find a locked gate.
Erick Kairu, a neighbor of the school told the inquest that to access the burning dormitory, he had to navigate around the school perimeter where he found an opening in the fence.
“I initially thought the noise was coming from the signing and intercession prayers from the nearby Full Gospel church who were holding a prayer vigil. But when I stepped out of the house, I heard the commotion and then I saw fire at the school. I immediately ran towards the scene but I went through the fence because the gate had been locked, ”said Kairu.
According to an earlier testimony by James Maina, a former guard at the school, it was at around 10 pm when he noticed a cloud of smoke billowing from the boys’ dormitory making his normal night patrols at the school compound. He told the inquest in November last year that the fire was at one of the three doors that the dormitory had.
The area in question according to testimonies submitted in the inquest was on the lower side of the dormitory where the toilets and bathrooms were located.
Maina said he immediately started calling for help using a whistle that he always carried with him. At the same time, he started assisting the boys to get out of the dorm through the other two doors and there were those who were escaping the fire through the windows.
On Tuesday Kairu said that upon entering the compound he found a flurry of activities. There was a crowd of people trying to extinguish the fire using water from a tank located near the dormitory while others were evacuating the children to a safer ground.
“I joined in and it was then that I came across one boy who had serious injuries on his body. With no emergency vehicle available, I rushed back to my house a took my car and together with one of the teachers, we rushed the boy to Mary Immaculate hospital in Mweiga. But after two hours, the doctors there told us that they had to refer him to the Nyeri County Referral hospital for better treatment using their ambulance,” Kairu told the court.
Another witness, Elijah Katikala who was a class teacher for one of the Grade 7 classes told the inquest that he was part of the team that was trying to extinguish the fire. He said that the intensity of the inferno prevented him from entering the dormitory to rescue the trapped boys. He said he assisted by fetching water from the nearby tank and handing it to those that were battling the flames.
“I was not close to the dorm because the scene was dangerous for me. The only thing I did was fetch water and pass it to those who putting out the fire. But I saw the boys being rescued. They were being carried by those who were getting in the dorm,” he told the court during an interrogation by the lawyer for the victims , Raphael Olieti.
The Deputy Headteacher, Nahashon Kariuki said that he was informed about the fire at around 11pm.By the time he was arriving at the school four minutes later, he found teachers, the school director David Kinyua and other first responders evacuating students to an assembly point near the administration block where a roll call was conducted.
“We started with a roll call for all for the boys and girls combined and then we assigned the class teacher to take the roll call for their respective classes. We would call out a name and if there was no response, one of the teachers would rush towards the dormitory area to check if they were still trapped in the dorm. The roll call was however interrupted when members of the public started to flock the school compound,” he said.
Details also emerged that the school operated as a day and boarding facility with a total of 330 boarders who included 164 were boys and 166 girls. But when the boarders reported to school on September 3, 2024, three boys did fail to turn up bringing the total capacity of the boys’ dormitory on the night of the inferno to 161.
In his testimony before the inquest the Head Teacher Mr Macharia, they were able to account for all the 166 girls. It was a second roll call that was conducted with the help of the Kenya Redcross Society that the school administration was able to trace the where about of the unaccounted-for boys.
“I recall 11 boys were taken to hospital in the company of three teachers. Through the help of a Red Cross we were able to call the parents some of whom had picked the learners without notifying the school. So we were able to account for all the boarders even the ones who were in the hospital,” Macharia told the inquest.
“Two succumbed, one at the Mary Immaculate Mweiga and the other at Kenyatta National Hospital. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations informed us that they retrieved 19 bodies from the dormitories,” he added.
The court also heard that nearly two years after the incident, the school was yet to establish a monument in honour of the 21 boys who perished in the fire with Macharia noting that the school was in the process of organising a commemoration of the boys.
The inquest will resume on August 3.
By Wangari Mwangi
