We saw death at close range: Survivors recount ordeal in Embakasi gas tragedy
A resident of one of the affected plots checks the extent of damage at his house after a gas explosion at Mradi Village in Embakasi on February 2, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Reports indicate that a lorry carrying gas cylinders exploded, igniting a huge ball of fire that spread widely in the affected area.
- It all began around 11pm when he endlessly heard a cocktail of exploding noises, wails and sharp resounding screams that vigorously cut through the air.
- Mr Kioko was rescued by an ambulance that took him to Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital, where other victims including his wife and children are.
If you ask Henry Kioko to describe the Thursday midnight tragedy when fire broke out in Embakasi, Nairobi, he can only come up with the biblical worst kind of fire: Hell-fire.
For him and the nearly 300 survivors, they cheated death that fateful night, and he believes it was only a miracle they made it out, after balls of fire rained on them.
“The Bible talks about Hell-fire. Well, I have never seen it but I am pretty sure what I saw last night is either much worse,” he tells the Nation at the Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital.
Here, where a majority of the survivors were brought for treatment, Kioko is tossing and turning in so much pain with visibly big red wounds on his hands, head, back and feet, he says death stared at him right in the eyes.
“Were it not for diving into a filthy pool of raw sewage which I spotted as I fled for my life and completely immersed myself in there, I would have burnt to death,” he starts off, going down memory lane as tears raced down his cheeks.
The husband and father of two is one of the 300 Kenyans from Mradi village, who spent the whole of Thursday night fighting to stay alive with the horror of a deadly gas explosion changing their lives forever.
It all began around 11pm when he endlessly heard a cocktail of exploding noises, wails and sharp resounding screams that vigorously cut through the air.
“I asked my wife and two children to go out first and find a safe spot after I saw a very huge fire racing towards the direction of our house. They are all I have and my concern was making sure all of them were out of harms way. Even though I am badly injured, it gives me a sigh of relief to know that they escaped without a scratch,” Mr Kioko says.
He then ran as fast as he could, but by then the fire seemed to split into two as it came closer “giving birth to another cloud of red fire just above my head.”
Mr Kioko would then, as if being stung by bees, cover his head with his bare hands leaving the back side of both his hands exposed to the fire that did not spare them. The fire also caught up with his back and feet.
He says that the bouts of pain that ran through his body was just too excruciating considering that his clothes also caught fire.
“I had no option but to jump inside a pool of raw stagnant sewage that I spotted and immersed myself in there until the fire had subsided,” he discloses.
He says, from time to time, he raised his head above the sewage filth to gasp some air.
“I was in there for about an hour and did not care because all I wanted was to stay alive and find my wife and children.”
He was rescued by an ambulance that took him to Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital, where other victims including his wife and children are.
Here, in a cruel twist of irony, he faced yet another problem: There was no medicine, even those to address pain, and he was required to buy them at a nearby private chemist.
“I was brought to Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital at midnight but it took two hours for them to attend to me and even give me an injection for the pain, they have given me a prescription because they say they do not have any medication in stock to treat me. They expect me to buy the medicine, but with what money when I lost everything?” Mr Kioko poses.
He wonders how, or whether, he will live with the burnt hands, and whether they’ll get back to their full strength.
“It is not yet my time to die, the hands that feed my family are down but not out, I know we will overcome this one way or another,” Mr Kioko says.
Like Mr Kioko’s family, Agnes Wairimu and her two children who live right next to Oriental Godown; where the police say was the epicentre of the gas explosion, have no place to put up tonight and neither do they have had any change of clothes.
“I don’t know where to start from Because my house burnt, as I tried to salvage my things, people started stealing them and they stole everything.”
All her children bear marks of burns on their feet and hands while their mother does not only carry burns on her face, feet and right arm but also intense pain allover her body from the stampede.
“We were all running in the same direction when the fire broke and in the process, some people like me fell down which led to some people stepping on us.”
“My cousin, a guard who works at the Embakasi gas facility that exploded told me he reported a gas leak from a truck that had arrived as early as 5pm but his concern fell on deaf ears,” Mr James Makau who sustained injuries on his hands and legs told the Nation.
“I couldn’t breathe at a point. It was a battle to stay alive and I do not ever wish what happened to us last night to happen to anyone else,” he said and requested the government to hunt down anyone and everyone dealing in LPG gas next to residential areas.
