Interviews with survivors, locals and security officials revealed details unreported before about the fire whose cause remains unknown.
“The dormitory has three doors. My bed was near the door at one end of the dormitory but it was locked on that night,” Brian Karanja* said.
“I woke up when the fire was raging. Pupils were crowded at the two other doors attempting to get out. We were also being blocked by boxes and the fire was huge. There was a stampede but I managed to jumped out through a window.”
According to the boy, the fire started from that end and it was difficult to get to the other end of the dormitory which is about 100ft.
Parents at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Kieni, Nyeri County.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Official records indicate that on the fateful night, the dorm had 164 boys. We established that a corridor between the beds was narrow and the dormitory had only four windows on each side.
In the dorm were cubicles, partitioned using wood, which might partly explain the intensity of the blaze. The beds were made of wooden frames.
“There was no roll call at night. It was only in the classroom in the morning. The teacher took us to the dormitory after preps,” Karanja said.
We met him at the school on Friday, a week after the tragedy. Karanja is still traumatised.
He described the situation at the time of the fire as horrifying. His parents arrived early in the morning and took him home, about three kilometres away.
The patron’s cubicle that was partitioned using cardboard material was near the toilet exit. The dorm had four windows on each side.
Drone footage indicates that the door at the end that was open leads to a rack where the boys used to keep their shoes. A few metres away is a kitchen. Not far away from the boys’ dormitory is the girls’ dorm. This was spared by the fire.
A parents breaks down at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County on September 6, 2024 where a fire incident claimed the lives of 21 pupils.
Photo credit: Joseph Kanyi | NATION Media Group
An officer not authorised to speak to the media said the patron – who hails from Western Kenya – had not resumed duty since the school opened a week earlier.
September 5 was an ordinary day for the boys. They had dinner at 5.45pm and went for preps from 7pm to 9.45pm when they retired to bed. The fire is reported to have started at 11pm.
At the school, which has since been closed, Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) detectives spent the day recording statements from teachers and other workers.
Homicide Section head Martin Nyuguto was at the school but did not brief the media on the investigations. Some parents were being counselled at PCEA Nganyuthe Church at the lower end of the compound.
Another officer said no one has been arrested in connection with the incident. The source said the investigations are being handled by a team from DCI headquarters in Nairobi. He said all survivors have been accounted for.
Mr Anthony Mwangi, who was one of the first responders, said the fire brigade arrived late and that locals struggled to extinguish the blaze.
Parents wait for information at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County on September 6, 2024 following a fire incident that claimed the lives of 21 pupils.
Photo credit: Joseph Kanyi | Nation Media Group
The worshippers were some of the first responders, rescuing many children.
“On realising the screams were not from the church but the school, I ran out and joined the others in saving the children. The only light was from the fire. We used the pupils’ basins to fight the fire but the storage tanks ran out of water,” he said.
Though the school has a good fence and gate at the front, the rear tells a different story.
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It is easily accessible through an opening which does not have a gate or guard. One goes through it to find a wooden structure that is the teachers’ quarters.
Hillside Endarasha Academy owner David Kinyua was among those questioned by the DCI detectives on Friday.
The gate to his house is about 30 metres from the school. Next to his home is that of area assistant chief Mwangi Mwaura.
“We still don’t know what transpired, now that KPLC says it is not to blame. Looking at this school, anybody can enter from this side,” said Mr Martin Kariuki, a villager.
Parents grieve after visiting the scene where 17 pupils perished in a dormitory fire at Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri County on September 6, 2024.
Photo credit: Joseph Kanyi | Nation Media Group
Another resident, Peter Wambugu who lives about two kilometres away, told the Nation that he got to the school at 1.00 am.
“We were not allowed to enter by the assistant chief. By that time the fire engines had already arrived,” he said. Although not a parent at the school currently, Mr Wambugu was full of praise of the school saying that his two daughters had passed through Hillside Endarasha Academy and both got admission to national schools.
On Friday, the cabinet secretary for Education Julius Migos Ogamba called for an end to what he described as “a worrying insecurity situation in our schools that is manifesting itself in the form of unexplained fires”.
“While I do not want to apportion blame to any of us, I believe that we can forestall such spate of school fires if each of us played their role in enforcing the government’s Safety Standards Manual for Schools in Kenya.
"I promise that the Government will not spare any of our officers, teachers and other school managers who are found to be flouting the measures in place to safeguard lives of our children,” said Mr Ogamba.
He spoke at Tharaka University during the installation of its first chancellor, Prof Ratemo Michieka.
