Poor security plans to blame for 2009 Nakumatt hell that claimed 30 lives

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The downtown building known as the Woolworths was owned by a Mr. Patel. Nakumatt had rented the building for 20 years starting in 1995. [Courtesy]

A Nakumatt fire that killed 30 people in 2009 did not have a human hand, but several critical fire protection and firefighting errors made matters worse.

The fame of the once-giant retailer, whose symbol was an elephant, has faded over time in the memories of Kenyans who were largely its customers, but the question of who caused the fire that razed the Nakumatt Downtown supermarket on January 28, 2009, remained answered.

For eight years, the court questioned 31 witnesses about the circumstances leading to the deaths, including an unborn child and its mother, who were burned to the point of being unrecognizable.

At the end of the investigation, Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi did not designate anyone to bear the wrath of the law for the dead.

“I find there is no evidence to suggest that this fire was started on purpose… I find the fire to be accidental and not deliberate. No offense has been shown to have been committed by a known or unknown person in the circumstances of this case in relation to the deaths at the supermarket, ”said Mr. Andayi.

He ruled out that an electrical surge was the cause of the fire. Although some of the witnesses who were former Nakumatt employees said the power continued to run, the court ruled that there had been a smooth transition from the diesel generator to the service of the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC ). .

The downtown building known as the Woolworths was owned by a Mr. Patel. Nakumatt had leased the building for 20 years starting in 1995. The branch had three access points, two on Kimathi Street and one on Kimathi Lane, which was also the reception area.

Nakumatt was on the first and second floors of the building.

The investigation found that at the location of the generator, which was suspected to be the culprit, gas cylinders that had been placed on the stairs and insufficient water nearby and from the Nairobi County Government , as well as a missing smoke alarm system, made matters worse.

Andayi was of the opinion that based on the testimonies of 31 witnesses, the generator room was inside the building. According to him, if it had been installed outside, the disaster could not have happened, and if it had, the number of victims would have been lower.

Following this observation, he recommended that buildings should not have electric generators inside and should not be placed near flammable objects.

The fire grew rapidly and to such an extent that it overwhelmed those who attempted to put it out. They all ran for safety.

This situation led to a scene of darkness, heat and confusion inside the supermarket, with so many people trying to find a way to escape.

There was a staircase from the ground floor to the first floor. In the event of an emergency requiring evacuation, people on the first floor would be evacuated by the staircase leading to the access on Kimathi Way.

The stairs leading from the upper floor to the ground floor were inaccessible because engulfed by the fire exacerbated by the presence of gas cylinders stored there.

A fire razed the supermarket in downtown Nakumatt on January 28, 2009. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

I tried to jump

Those upstairs tried to jump out of the building to get to safety through the windows and the roof. Some were successful but others remained trapped inside the building, possibly overwhelmed by smoke inhalation.

“The location of the generator inside the building and the gas cylinders near and inside the building, and on the stairs created a dangerous situation which made it almost impossible to save lives upstairs. superior, ”Andayi observed.

“It is recommended that a generator set be located outside the building and not next to elements that could cause the fire to spread rapidly in the event of a burst. It is further recommended not to store gas cylinders, whether full or empty, in a supermarket or near a generator, ”he said.

The magistrate also found that the former employees of the supermarket had not been trained in emergency stairs. He believed that if Nakumatt employees had been subjected to regular fire drills, then they would have helped their customers to safety.

“If these measures had been taken, perhaps the scale of the disaster would have been reduced,” said the magistrate.

Those who died were trapped and consumed by fire. The court observed that they must have been overwhelmed shortly after inhaling the smoke vapors before their bodies were burnt to the point of unrecognizable.

The cause of death in each case was 110 percent severe burns.

Among those called to testify was Nakumatt’s beleaguered boss Atul Shah, who was in Mombasa at the time. Shah had been Managing Director of Nakumatt Holdings since 1991.

He testified that the downtown branch manager called him and informed him of the incident. According to him, he called the head office in Nakumatt and neighboring branches to help him.

Shah then called the police and the fire department. The court heard that as of 6:30 p.m., Nakumatt had lost five staff members in hell. All five had been assigned the role of fire marshals.

Following the deadly fire, Shah said he was charged with negligence in Makadara court, but was later acquitted. The second witness was Phillip Ludeo, downtown manager at the time. He told the court he had 103 employees, including 10 firefighters.

He said the gas cylinders were kept on the first floor after consultation with the National Environmental Management Authority, the former City Council, the fire department and the Ministry of Public Works.

Nakumatt, he said, also had paint in his storage.

The second witness claimed that in the morning hours of the fateful day there was a bang and then a blackout that occurred on the Nation Center side.

According to him, the generator restarted and everything seemed normal until later in the day when he heard a fire siren.

Ludeo said the fire assembly point was Jevanjee Gardens.

Sunday Nkichabe, also a former Nakumatt employee, told the court the power outage occurred around 10:30 a.m. and a second at 2:30 p.m. According to him, the fire broke out a few minutes at 3 p.m.

This witness explained that when he heard a detonation, he assumed it was the gas canisters. The witness denied seeing anyone or a shopper prevented from escaping from the supermarket.

Firefighters try to put out a blaze at the Nakumatt city center supermarket in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Jan. 28, 2009. [Reuters]

Coordination failure

Hellen Otieno was the fourth witness. She worked at the credit card counter. Ms Otieno said the fire may have been caused by a failure in coordination between the KPLC power supply and the generator.

The court also heard from Gilbert Githima, an electrician who was in charge of the generator set at the time. According to him, Nakumatt was using a Volvo Penta generator, which was installed in January 2009 by Ryce Engineering. “It was automatic so that if there was a power surge it would turn on automatically,” he explained.

He testified that on the fateful day he showed up for duty at around 8 a.m. and two and a half hours later there was a power failure and the generator worked.

At 12:30 p.m., he checked the fuel in the generator, which was 13% full. According to him, there were two 200-liter metal drums, one full and the other half-full.

Githima said they added 40 liters to the generator using a hand pump, since the generator was still running.

“It was safe,” he said, adding that he removed the pump and went to the checkout area.

He said it was not his decision to keep the barrels of diesel fuel in the generator room.

The technician told the court that the utility power returned at 2:30 p.m. and the system went from the generator to the grid.

According to him, smoke was coming out of the radiator duct which was connected to the generator for cooling purposes. Only hot air should come out of the duct.

He said he saw plastic crates of milk burning that were resting on the radiator duct. Githima, along with a few colleagues, tried to put out the fire without success.

This witness stated that the firefighters took between 15 and 30 minutes to arrive.

Duncan Kimithi, an officer in the public works department, told the court that the probable cause of the fire was fuel vapors coming into contact with the hot exhaust pipe of the generator or sparks during the shift, which entered in contact with the hot exhaust pipe of the generator. .

He said he could not come to any concrete conclusions due to the damage caused by the fire.

Another witness, Charles Mwaura, then an engineer at KPLC, told the court that the blackout affected several places in the central business district.

He said there was an outage due to high-voltage equipment that broke down at the Nation Center substation, 80 meters from downtown Nakumatt.

He said, however, that power cuts were not the cause of the Nakumatt Downtown supermarket fire. If there had been a fire due to the KPLC equipment, it would have been at the Nation Center substation itself, he said.

Pregnant woman

One of the victims was the wife of a professor at the University of Nairobi. At the time, the court learned, she was eight months pregnant.

The speaker learned that they were killed in the blaze after she did not return home. A DNA test enabled the speaker to identify the body which had been burnt to the point of being unrecognizable.

The fire also invalidated a former Kenya Air Force officer. Samuel Kimei told the court that he went to buy bikes for his children. “About 20 minutes after I went to check the children’s bikes, the power started to turn on and off. It rang the last time and darkness engulfed the upper story. A loud explosion followed, ”Kimei said.

At least 30 people were killed in the blaze.

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