Long wait at the mortuary

• Relatives of Nakumatt Downtown fire victims tell of the agony of having to wait for hours at city morgue

She had not seen her mother for four days, and when she trudged to City Mortuary on Saturday, Pamela Ateka had hoped at least to find her body there.

Dozens of people milled about outside the building on Ngong Road, waiting to find out the fate of their missing relatives. Hopes were momentarily raised when a Red Cross van arrived carrying two bodies that had been retrieved from the gutted remains of Nakumatt Downtown that was destroyed Wednesday by a raging fire.

Ms Ateka will have to wait longer for news about her mother because the mortuary superintendent would not let people view the remains.

“He told us nobody would be allowed to view the bodies” she said “I have been camping here since morning and nothing seems to be forthcoming”.

She was not alone. A group of seven people seated in the shade mumured among themselves in low tones.

At a news conference on Saturday afternoon, officials involved in the recovery said revised figures showed 46 people had been reported missing, and 23 bodies had been recovered.

Ms Ateka lost track of her mother Rebecca Mukolwe who had left her Kayole home at about 1 p.m.

“She had gone to collect a DVD player from the supermarket,” Ms Ateka said.The DVD was to replace another she had bought last year but which developed a problem..

“We don’t know what is going on,” said Mary Njoroge, another woman looking for a missing relative, said. “We have been here since Friday, and we are yet to get any information from either Red Cross or the government”.

A Red Cross worker, who asked not to be identified, told the Sunday Nation that it would be difficult to identify some of the remains because they had been burned beyond recognition.

Desperate and anxious relatives streamed to the mortuary after it was reported that some bodies had been transferred there on Friday.

As the Red Cross van made its way out of the delivery area, dozens of people began to wail.

Pedestrians and motorists heading west on Ngong Road stopped to see what was happening, causing a huge snarl-up at the roundabout.

Relatives may have a long wait until any bodies are indentified through the use of DNA sampling, which is a long process.
Alice, who would not give her other name, said she had been outside the mortuary since Friday afternoon.

“I am confused. I don’t know what to do” she said. “Nobody is telling us what is going on here. We only hear that the superintendent does not allow us to see the bodies”.

She said she and the others waiting had received no official communication from either the Red Cross or the government.

“We are just here expecting anything,” she said “I have to go and check what the Red Cross has found so far.”

Back in town, Kennedy Maiva, 45, said he had gone to the supermarket to check on the price of a gas cooker on Wednesday afternoon.

The freelance graphic designer from Kariako could not have known he was walking into a death trap.

“I had gone to check the price of a gas cooker. My wife wanted one, and I had decided to start at Nakumatt before going to other shops and compare prices,” he told Sunday Nation.

He said just as he reached the part of the supermarket where the gas cookers were kept, he heard an explosion; then thick smoke engulfed the whole building.

“I had been at the second floor when the explosion occurred,” he said. “A lot of people from first floor were running upwards, saying there was fire downstairs.”

He said he ran to a supermarket attendant and asked him if there was an emergency exit.

“He took us to a place were around 15 people, who were mostly women, were crowding in a corner,” he said. “This was only where there was some ventilation as I learnt when I reached there. People had gone there for fresh air. If there had been escape routes, many people would have survived.”

In the same place there were several drums and other items he could not see because of the heavy smoke.

With the help of the attendant Mr Maiva said he managed to pull off the grill covering the window and jump out.

“I don’t know how I managed, but if there could have been emergency exits upstairs, many lives would have been saved,” he said. “I only remember a woman telling me to help her evacuate a baby she was holding...I believe they perished.”

He was taken to Nairobi West hospital where wounds on his fingers were stitched up.

Fred Ouma was in the supermarket when the lights went out and were then restored by a generator.

“I was doing shopping for my daughter who is joining Form One next week,” he said. “When the lights went off, I didn’t suspect anything was wrong”.

He said he later heard a lady attendant telling a colleague that a fridge was abnormally hot.

“She asked him to check it and said she was going for lunch,” he said. “A few minutes later when I was at the counter, there was an explosion followed by a thick smoke”.

He said he pushed his daughter and ran outside as more explosions followed.

“People started running out, but a guard immediately closed the main exit,” he said. “I asked him why he had done so while people were burning inside.”

He said the guard told a crowd that was towards him that he had orders to keep the door closed. He said two people of Indian origin were let out and the door was closed again by the same guard.

“I saw them carry two blue bags as the second explosion occurred,” Mr Maiva said. Ismael Abdul, 18, said he struggled with a guard and told him his mother and sister were trapped inside the burning building.

“A guard wrestled me down when I told him my mum and sister were inside. He shoved me off and told me he had instructions not to open the door,” the young man said bitterly. He said he then called his sister and asked if she was okay.

“She said she wasn’t and that there was a lot of smoke,” he said. He has not seen her or his mother since.

Leyghton Jones Harraiah, a shopper, said an attendant stopped him as he ran out of the burning building and asked him if he had stolen anything.

“He held me by the shirt as I was running out,” he said. “He was saying I had stolen something.”

But Nakumatt staff denied the allegations. Patrick Gitonga, an attendant, said the doors were not locked. He explained that a colleague, Alexander Mangeli, went missing while helping shoppers out of the burning building.