Nyeri: Testimonies by teachers at the Hillside Endarasha Academy during a public inquest into the dormitory fire that claimed the lives of 21 boys on September 5, 2024 have exposed gaps in safety preparedness and emergency response at the school.
According to Kenya News Agency, while giving their testimonies before Senior Resident Magistrate Mary Gituma, the school’s Headteacher Joseph Macharia and his Deputy Nahashon Kariuki admitted that as part of the management of the school, they did not know the institution required an early warning system, a set of disaster risk reduction strategies, as well as crisis response teams to respond to emergency situations.
Surprisingly, they also told the court that despite teaching in a boarding school for more than a decade, they were vaguely conversant with the School Safety Standards Manual by the Ministry of Education, which details bed spacing and capacity limits for school dormitories. The headteacher revealed that the school only acquired a copy of the manual after the tragedy.
During the inquest, which was attended by the parents of the victims, it also emerged that the first responders, who included members of the neighboring community and teachers, arrived at the scene to find a locked gate. Erick Kairu, a neighbor of the school, told the inquest that to access the burning dormitory, he had to navigate around the school perimeter where he found an opening in the fence.
An earlier testimony by James Maina, a former guard at the school, described how he noticed a cloud of smoke billowing from the boys’ dormitory during his normal night patrols. He stated that the fire was at one of the three doors that the dormitory had, located near the toilets and bathrooms.
Maina said he immediately started calling for help using a whistle that he always carried with him. At the same time, he began assisting the boys to get out of the dorm through the other two doors, with some escaping the fire through the windows.
On Tuesday, Kairu recounted that upon entering the compound, he found a flurry of activities, with a crowd attempting to extinguish the fire using water from a nearby tank and evacuating children to safer ground. He helped transport an injured boy to Mary Immaculate Hospital, and later to the Nyeri County Referral Hospital for better treatment.
Another witness, Elijah Katikala, a class teacher for one of the Grade 7 classes, said he was part of the team trying to extinguish the fire. The intensity of the inferno prevented him from entering the dormitory, so he assisted by fetching water and handing it to those battling the flames.
The Deputy Headteacher, Nahashon Kariuki, said he was informed about the fire at around 11 pm and arrived at the school four minutes later, finding teachers, the school director, and other first responders evacuating students to an assembly point for a roll call.
Details emerged that the school operated as a day and boarding facility with a total of 330 boarders, 164 boys and 166 girls. On the night of the inferno, the boys’ dormitory had a capacity of 161 due to three boys not reporting to school.
In his testimony, Head Teacher Mr. Macharia stated that they were able to account for all the 166 girls and traced the whereabouts of the unaccounted-for boys with the help of the Kenya Red Cross Society. He recounted that 11 boys were taken to the hospital, and two succumbed to their injuries.
The court also heard that nearly two years after the incident, the school was yet to establish a monument in honor of the 21 boys who perished in the fire, with Macharia noting that the school was in the process of organizing a commemoration.
