Mosiria: Fourways fire is wake-up call for businesses at petrol stations
Some of the vehicles burnt down on Wednesday night when a fire broke out at Total Energies Fourways Petrol Station along Kiambu Road, pictured on April 2, 2026.
On Wednesday at around 8 pm at the Fourways area of Kiambu Road, some patrons were eating out or ordering takeaway from restaurants near the petrol station when it suddenly turned into a life and death situation.
A fire broke out after a truck offloading fuel went alight, forcing residents in nearby eateries and businesses to flee for their lives.
Now, Nairobi County Chief Officer in charge of Customer Service Geoffrey Mosiria has cautioned that the Fourways incident is a wake-up call to business people operating close to petrol stations.
“This incident serves as a serious wake-up call. Anyone who has established a petrol station within or near a residential area should take immediate steps to relocate it to a safer, designated zone to prevent such dangerous occurrences. The same applies to LPG gas plants that are illegally operating within residential neighborhoods owners must act responsibly and move these facilities away from areas where people live,” Mr Mosiria said after arriving to the scene.
While the police say they are investigating what triggered the fire in the truck, which had reportedly finished offloading but, for unknown reasons, remained at the station, some locals have blamed the station management for carelessness.
According to one of the security guards who was working at the shops near the station, the fire broke out and the truck driver immediately attempted to drive the vehicle away from the station.
However, he was blocked by the busy car park around the station, as well as by the confusion among the people in their cars and in the eateries who also wanted to flee the scene.
“The fire would not have burnt these shops if the driver had managed to penetrate through to the highway. That was too late because the people who were in this parking area were also running away, and they blocked it,” Jane Wambui said.
As a result, the driver crashed into the bollards between the car parks and the two-storey building housing Pizza Inn, Creamy Inn, a minimarket, a chemist and a M-Pesa shop, all of which were destroyed by the fire.
“These shops would not have been affected this much. By the time of the incident, many customers were in the shops.”
The aftermath of a fire that broke out at Total Energies Fourways petrol station along Kiambu road last on Wednesday night pictured on April 2, 2026. Several businesses and vehicles were burnt down.
In the aftermath, it was clear that six vehicles including the truck were razed as well as the shops.
John, who was one of the people around the area during the incident said that the losses could have been worse had it not been the effort of the driver to drive the truck out of the underground storage area.
“All these shops and buildings around here would have been destroyed. We have gas cylinders here, the situation could have been bad as of now. The driver did his best to get the truck away but the vehicles around stopped him,” Mr John said, refusing to reveal his second name.
When the officers from the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority arrived to assess the situation, they were briefed by one of the statin attendants that the truck had finished offloading and that the small amount of spillage of oil is what led to the ire outbreak.
No one was injured but the people who were affected are counting losses.
Nairobi County is one of the cities that has been struggling to relocate the matatu Saccos from picking and dropping passengers around the fuelling stations.
Despite argument by the County Assembly of Nairobi that the danger could be disastrous in the event that the fire breaks out in the station, the passengers and matatus continue operation from the station.
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