Vincent Awange

The Utumishi Girls Academy fire happened this morning in Gilgil, 28 years after the one at Bombolulu Girls High School in Mazeras, Coast Region in March 1998 where 26 students died. After the Bombolulu fire, President Moi formed a Commission of Inquiry chaired by Bishop Lawi Imathiu and it submitted its report on 31st July 1998. The recommendations included All exit doors in school buildings must open outwards. Fire extinguishers must be provided and mandatory fire drills conducted for staff and students. Dormitory capacity must not be exceeded; overcrowding must be legally enforced against. Teachers' houses must be built so that at least the headteacher lives within the school compound. Matrons must have minimum qualifications (Form IV and nursing/housekeeping training). Regular, rigorous school inspections must be conducted as required by the Education Act. Unqualified tradesmen must not be permitted to carry out electrical installations. A national Fire Service Act should be enacted. Students must receive coaching on emergency procedures including fire. Schools must have adequate, functioning security fencing. The similarities between the Utumishi incident and the Bombolulu ones are deeply disturbing. 1. Timing — a night fire in a dormitory. Bombolulu burned at night. Utumishi burned at night. Students were asleep, in darkness, in an unfamiliar emergency. This is precisely why fire drills and clear escape routes matter most — and why they are most often neglected. 2. Inward-opening or locked doors. One of the Bombolulu Commission's most urgent recommendations — Recommendation 21 — was that exit doors of school buildings must open outwards. A parent at the scene of the Utumishi fire claimed that one of the emergency exits remained locked during the fire, and that only one matron was on duty, meaning only one of the two emergency doors was opened. A parent told NTV that most of the injuries were caused by students jumping from the upper floor because one of the doors was closed. Twenty-eight years after the Commission made this recommendation in the strongest possible terms, students are still dying at doors. 3. Single matron, inadequate supervision. At Bombolulu, the Commission was scathing that only one under-qualified matron was responsible for the safety of 146 girls at night, with no teachers on site. The Utumishi parent alleged the school had only one matron assigned to the dormitory, arguing that two matrons could have opened both emergency exits simultaneously. The Bombolulu recommendation that matrons hold minimum qualifications and that headteachers live on the school compound appears not to have been implemented. 4. No fire drills, no emergency preparedness. The Bombolulu Commission found that not a single student or teacher had been coached on fire emergency procedures. The speed with which the Utumishi dormitory became fatal — with students jumping from upper floors — suggests students did not know what to do and did not have a practised evacuation route. 5. Overcrowded dormitories. Bombolulu's dormitory held nearly 50% more students than its capacity. No information on Utumishi's occupancy has yet been confirmed, but the number of casualties — 16 dead and over 100 hospitalised from a single dormitory — raises the same question. 6. The national legislative gap. Recommendation 24 of the Bombolulu report called for a national Fire Service Act. Kenya currently does not have a single, overarching national Fire and Rescue Act that governs the entire country. While there are specific legal codes and workplace rules, legislative efforts like the Fire and Rescue Services Professionals Bill and various national disaster management policies have been introduced in parliament but are still uncompleted - Twenty-eight years later.