Prayers and questions after Nairobi slum fire deaths
The Holy Family Basillica on Tuesday dedicated its morning mass to the over 100 people who perished in the Sinai fire tragedy.
At the scene, the Red Cross said that six bodies were retrieved from Nairobi River Tuesday morning. In total, 82 bodies have been recovered.
As the church offered prayers for the dead, it pointed fingers at the laxity of government officials, the tendency of politicians to ignore the right policies and actions in favour of those that are popular and the culture of refusing to learn from past tragedies.
Father Calisto Nyagilo, the secretary to Cardinal John Njue, said the “greed and selfishness” plus an element of laziness in Kenya, are some of the ingredients that made the Sinai inferno possible.
“Blame it on the greed and selfishness of our leaders and also of ourselves,” said the priest.
“This is a dead society; we have killed ourselves.”
Quoting security expert Werunga Simiyu, who in a primetime interview with NTV had analysed the problem as being government laxity, power-hungry politicians and the people’s tendency to love quick money, Fr Nyagilo said Kenyans ought to learn from the tragedy or else such incidents will be common occurrences.
“The government takes things so easy. It is never proactive. It always reacts,” he added.
The priest noted that the way the politicians had blocked the demolition of substandard highrise buildings to protect their interests, it is the same way the politicians had blocked the relocation of the Sinai residents from the Kenya Pipeline bypass along which Monday’s inferno arose killing an estimated 120, flattening their homes and destroying their livelihoods .
"Politicians see these slums in terms of votes and that’s why the slums are still there,” Fr Nyagilo told the faithful in the packed morning mass.
The deadly inferno at the Sinai slums has been touted as one that was preventable, only that the laxity of the City Council to implement the eviction of the slum dwellers from the precincts of the pipeline hit a snag due to meddling politicians and the residents’ outright refusal to move.
As the rains poured in the city on Monday morning and most of the slum dwellers were huddled inside their tin shacks, they smelled fuel as it was flowing through a drain on its way to the Ngong River.
According to eye witness accounts, the slum dwellers called each other to join the party and scoop the ‘manna’ of super petrol. They stood knee-deep in raw sewage, scooping the fuel that was leaking from a broken pipe at the Kenya Pipeline depot in Industrial Area.
As they gathered to enjoy the scooping in the hope of making a living –as they normally did when Kenya Pipeline cleaned its depot and released diesel into the river—there was an explosion and they all got burnt. Up to 160 are admitted in hospitals.
The rescue efforts were hampered by the poor access roads to the slums and disorganised rescue efforts as there was no command centre. At the scene, all the emergency services plus some volunteers looked lost as they stared at the uncovered bodies for hours on end.
