100 killed in Nairobi fuel fire

• Villagers scooping petrol from storm drain killed as fuel explodes
• River of fire streaks into village, consuming tens in their homes
• Children at a local school, including some in nursery, among the missing
• Kenya Pipeline says petrol from a leak carried to village by rain water

More than 100 people were killed in a petrol fire and 160 others needed hospital treatment in Nairobi on Monday.

In one of Kenya’s deadliest tragedies, villagers scooping petrol from storm drains were killed after the fuel exploded into flames.

The petrol came from a leak on the bypass between the Mombasa-Nairobi and Nairobi-Eldoret pipelines.

Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) said its engineers shut down the main Mombasa pipeline, through which fuel is transported from the Coast to storage depots upcountry, when the leak was detected.

But storm water from the rains in the city on Monday morning, managing director Selest Kilinda said, swept the spilt fuel through storm drains into Ngong River, on the banks of which the slum is located.

Villagers rushed to scoop the fuel gushing from the storm drains. An explosion shortly after 9am blew off manhole covers, sent rivers of fire streaking into the slum and killed many slum dwellers, many charred beyond recognition.

KPC said due to blocked sewer lines, the built-up pressure started ripping out manholes covers, blowing them away one after the other in the direction of the source of the leakage.

Engineers poured foam to prevent fire from spreading back to the pipeline, but that did not save the village of Sinai Lunga Lunga whose residents are now in mourning. 

Mr David Kania, a mechanic who was working at a nearby garage, was one of the first persons to arrive at the scene and helped in the rescue efforts. He drove three of his neighbours, whom he named only as Mama Murugi, Karanja and Karani, to Kenyatta National Hospital.

All had been burned as they tried to save children trapped in shacks.

“It was like hell,’’ he said, comparing the flames to what he has seen in movies about the Hiroshima nuclear bombing.

The fire burned an area the width of a football pitch and nearly a kilometre along the river bank.

Firefighters and rescuers had a hard time accessing the slum as there are no roads.

Victims told harrowing stories of losing loved ones and miraculous ones of survival.

One man survived because the fire started shortly after he went to fetch a jerrican to scoop fuel, but lost his six-year daughter whom he had left in the house.

Another man survived because he was woken up by shouts of people calling others to fetch free fuel and left his house just before it went up in flames.

Mr Ngei Kimalu, 43, who has lived in the slum since 1986 said his 22-year-old son, Kimwelu Ngei, is missing.

Mr Francis Amache, 21, said his brother, 16-year-old Owen Amache, is missing.