A truck filled with cooking gas canisters ignited in a huge ball of flame that spread around the facility, burning factories and homes in the Maradi neighborhood of Embakasi District, densely populated with low-income residents and close to Kenya's international airport.
People run for cover on Friday after a gas explosion in Nairobi's Embakasi area.
“The houses started shaking and explosions started happening every few seconds, so I got worried and went out to see what was happening,” said Zainab Saeed, 33, from a nearby hospital where she was being treated for second-degree burns. . “I went to the gate where I saw the flames. Then I felt heat in my body and fell.” She said she suffered burns on her legs and hands.
Saeed, who lives just 200 yards from the gas station, said she saw a woman on fire, but there was nothing she could do. At the Rawai Family Hospital, where she was receiving treatment, she said that one of her neighbors suffered burns to his head.
Everline Simiu, 45, said she had left her home to buy some groceries when the explosions started. “I heard a big explosion first, then other explosions,” she said. “The first explosion is what caused the fire to spread. Small bombs were exploding and electricity cables were burning. “I saw electricity cables falling on people and burning them.”
She escaped the flames and fireballs, and ran home to find her 23-year-old daughter, Cynthia, who was still in the house with burns all over her back and hands. Together they fled a neighborhood engulfed in flames and reached a nearby hospital.
Residents posted videos on social media showing huge flames rising into the night sky amid the sounds of people screaming.
A senior staff member at Kenyatta National Hospital, the country's largest health facility, said it had received 45 patients, nine of whom were in critical condition, and that more had arrived during the day.
“It took a while for help to arrive,” said Peter Njenga, who also witnessed the explosion. “Thirty minutes later and there was no help. People from informal settlements were running to other areas looking for safety.
Journalist Edwin Okoth, who investigated the stations for a local daily newspaper in 2016 and described how they were concentrated in residential areas, said the Embakasi plant that exploded was one of hundreds of illegal gas filling stations in the country. “I even mapped out the Embakasi plant in that story, and warned there was a regulatory gap, there was no monitoring, and it was a time bomb waiting to happen,” he said. “And now it's happened.”
He explained that gas cylinders, which are widely used for cooking, can be purchased legally from official merchants, but many residents choose cheaper options from illegal sellers.
“These guys don't have gas cylinders; [so] “They steal the empty cylinders, rebrand them, put different colors on them, and then go and refill them,” Okoth said. “This means that there is no safety protocol or procedures in the factories and the cylinders are not inspected. Even the quality of the gas is not guaranteed.”
He said that after being investigated, he received threats from regulatory officials who claimed he was being used by official traders to suppress small vendors.
The Kenya Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority said in a statement on Friday that the filling plant applied for permits to store natural gas in March, June and July last year, but all applications were rejected on the grounds that it “did not meet the specified standards for energy” LPG. [liquefied petroleum gas] A storage and packaging station in the area due to the high population density in the area.
In a statement, Wankego Manyara, president of the East African Petroleum Institute, the professional body overseeing the industry, said the owners of the facility had already been tried and convicted of running an unsafe facility but were released with fines in May 2023. Instead of being given a prison sentence.
“Despite the above actions and convictions, the owner continued to operate the illegal storage and refilling facility without even minimum safety standards and qualified LPG personnel as required by law, leading to this unfortunate and avoidable disaster,” it said.
Residents said the Embakasi area has many unofficial gas stations.
