How Nyeri County hurriedly prepared incomplete mortuary after Endarasha fire tragedy
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki (centre) briefs the media outside Naromoru Level IV Hospital mortuary in Nyeri on September 12, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Some of the bodies were burnt beyond recognition and had some parts missing.
- The children died when the dormitory they were sleeping in caught fire at night.
The 21 bodies of the children who died in the fire tragedy at Hillside Endarasha Academy were the first to be preserved at the newly-built Naromoru Funeral Home, the Nation has established.
They are the only bodies currently at the new funeral home where Chief Government Pathologist Dr Johansen Oduor conducted post-mortems on Thursday.
He said some of the bodies were burnt beyond recognition and had some parts missing.
The county government of Nyeri was forced to hurriedly prepare the facility at Naromoru Level IV Hospital after the fire tragedy at the school as there was no other mortuary nearby to accommodate the huge number. Three other learners are hospitalised.
Read: ‘We tried our best to save them’: Rescuers, relatives' horrors in Hillside Endarasha fire tragedy
The 19 bodies of the pupils that died in the Thursday night fire incident remained at the scene throughout Friday and were taken to the mortuary on Saturday at 6.00 pm
The hospital was opened last year.
A signage outside the mortuary shows that the wall extension is to be completed next month.
There was no activity at the mortuary on Saturday when the Nation visited as the families of the deceased children await the DNA results to identify them ahead of their burial.
Although some of the bodies were identifiable, the pathologists collected DNA samples from all of them and the affected families in order to clear out any doubts.
Government Pathologist Johansen Oduor (left) with DCI Homicide Director Martin Nyuguto moments after briefing journalists at Naromoru Level IV Hospital in Nyeri on September 11, 2024.
Officers from the Homicide Section of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) spent the whole of Friday recording statements from staff at the school.
On Saturday they were still at the school but have so far remained mum on the progress of investigations in the cause of the fire.
So far, no one has been arrested in connection with the case.
The owner of the school, David Kinyua was among the first to be questioned by the officers. His home which is about 30 metres away from the school has been busy since the incident. A tent has been erected and on Saturday, some people had gathered there for prayers.
The children died when the dormitory they were sleeping in caught fire at night. The Nation has established that the dormitory housing 164 boys at the time was congested and that made it difficult for them to escape. The investigators have kept the place out of bounds to the media as they still treat it as an active scene of crime.
However, we have obtained exclusive drone footage that shows the extent of destruction and what the boys went through as they fought for their lives. Using Google Earth technology, we have established that the dormitory measures about 70 feet long and 17 feet wide.
A few metres from it is the girls’ dormitory which appear similar to the burnt one. It is suspected to be congested also as official records indicate that on the fateful night, it had 163 girls.
“The scene was horrific when we arrived to save the children after we heard their screams. We used a panga to cut off the electric cable connecting the two dormitories to prevent the fire from spreading into the girls’ dormitory. We also removed a part of the life fence to stop the fire from spreading,” said Anthony Mwangi, a neighbour and one of the first responders.
