One week since the fire tragedy at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County, questions still linger over the cause, response, responsibility and learners’ safety of learners’ across the country.
It brings to question failure by the government through the Ministry of Education to effectively enforce safety guidelines by managements of schools. It is a case of lessons never learnt from previous investigations and reports through which families have lost children while at school.
The ministry, through the Directorate of Quality Assurance and Standards, is supposed to inspect all schools before registering and licensing to operate. It is also expected to periodically inspect both private and public schools for compliance.
Inside the burnt Hillside Endarasha Academy dorm
Acting regional commissioner Pius Murugu told Nation that there is a county disaster committee headed by him and Nyeri governor Mutahi Kahiga that is looking into the incident too. He said the committee will be meeting on Tuesday and one of the priority areas is to get the school back to operation. It is not clear why the government will invest in reinstating a private school.
The investigation into the Hillside case has since been taken over officers from the Homicide Section of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) from Nairobi.
On Friday, the head of the section Martin Nyuguto spent the day at the ill-fated school but did not give any briefing to the media on the case in which 21 boys died and three are still hospitalised. They are trying to establish whether the deaths were as result of an accident, arson or the dormitory was just a deathtrap.
However, investigations by Nation paint a picture of a deathtrap that was the school before the tragedy. Interviews with survivors of the tragedy say the boys’ dormitory was congested and they struggled to get out when the fire started. The dormitory housed 164 boys at the time of the incident according to official records.
We obtained exclusive drone footage of the structure that shows shortcomings of its construction. Using Google Earth technology, the dormitory measures about 70 feet by 42 feet.
According to the Safety Standards Manual for Schools in Kenya, the space between the beds should be at least 1.2 metres (3.9 feet) while the corridor or pathway space should not be less than 2 metres (6.6 feet). This is meant to ease the movement of learners in case of a fire incident or any other emergency.
Considering the size of the dormitory, it was impossible to pack all the wooden double decker beds and adhere to the guidelines. It is still not clear why there is a wall in the middle of the dormitory. It has windows and a door and made difficult exit from the building on fire.
A drone footage of Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County with the burnt dormitory at the centre.
Photo credit: Nation Media Group
“Each dormitory should have a door at each end and an additional emergency exit at the middle. It should be clearly labelled ‘Emergency Exit’. All doorways should be wide enough, at least five feet wide, and they should open outwards. They must not at any time be locked from outside when learners are inside,” reads the guidelines.
However, we have established that the dormitory at Hillside Academy had one door locked. It is from that end that the fire is said to have started, making it difficult for the boys to reach the door at the other end and escape.
Along one side, the dormitory has four windows and three on the other. There is a cubicle that was used by the patron and also has a window.
“My bed was near the door at one end of the dormitory but on that night, it was locked. I woke up when the fire was raging. The pupils were crowded at the two other doors trying to get out. We were also being blocked by boxes and the fire was too huge. There was a stampede but I managed to jumped out through a window,” Brian Karanja* told the Nation .
The safety guidelines also state that there should be regular patrols by the school security personnel or any other authorised security personnel and that no visitors should be allowed in the dormitory. There are still questions as to where the security guard was at the time of the tragedy.
We established that although the school is well-secured at the front by a strong life fence, reinforced with barbed wire, it is easily accessible from the rear where there is no gate but just a small opening.
Police officers at the gate of Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County on September 12, 2024.
Photo credit: Joseph Kanyi | Nation Media Group
School safety standard number one states that schools “should have properly demarcated and fenced grounds with a secure gate.
For schools without a gate and a fence, a sign should be posted next to the main passageway into the school with the words “NO TRESPASSING” and “VISITORS REPORT TO THE HEAD TEACHER’S OFFICE”. This was clearly flouted bringing to question whether the fire could have been caused by an outsider.
Earlier, there were contradictory figures from government officials on the number of children of died, sparking claims that there were children unaccounted for. This has however been debunked and all children have been accounted for. DNA analyses to identify the dead was carried out on Thursday and the results expected in two weeks.
