Deadly fire at a boarding school in Kenya kills and hurts many students
There were 16 deaths at a private school in Gilgil, Kenya, when a fire broke out.
The fire at Utumishi Girls School in Gilgil, which is about 120 kilometers west of Nairobi, killed at least 16 girls and hurt many more when it spread through a dorm early Thursday morning.
Police said that about 74 other students were being treated in the hospital after the event, which took place while students were sleeping in the boarding house.
The Kenya Red Cross and the officials say the fire began around 1:00 a.m. local time and quickly spread to a dorm with about 220 students.
Authorities dispatched rescue workers and emergency teams to the school while they continued to investigate the cause of the fire.
When speaking to parents and other people in the area who were gathered outside of the school, police chief Masoud Mwinyi called the situation “sad and upsetting.”
Authorities reported that some children fled to nearby areas during the chaos, and rescue teams continued to search for them hours after the event.
Mwinyi said that security officers were searching the area because some students ran away in the middle of the night out of fear.
Later, the school grounds were blocked off so that only parents could get in while relief and investigation work continued.
A family member of one of the students, Wambui Nderitu, said that when families got to the school, they were met with fear and confusion because they had heard that people had died and been hurt.
She said that some students got hurt when they jumped from higher floors to try to get out of the burning building.
Nderitu said that her nephew lived through the fire but broke his leg while trying to get out.
Kenya has had many school fires over the years. People intentionally started many of them due to overcrowded dorms or noncompliance with safety regulations.
In the past, reviews have found that some boarding school fires were started by angry students who were upset about rules or living conditions, while others were caused by accidents.
A dormitory was set on fire in Machakos County, Kenya, in 2001, killing 67 students. This was one of the deadliest school fires in Kenya.
In 2024, 2022, and 2017, there were also other dangerous events that happened in schools across the country and killed people or caused damage.
Kenya’s education ministry told a government committee in 2021 that between January and November 2020, there were about 126 cases of school arson.
Reuters also said that research showed that about 60 fire attacks happened in Kenyan schools in 2018.
Police said they were still looking into the new fire.
