At Least 10 Students Killed in Dormitory Fire at Kenyan Girls School
A dormitory fire at a girls boarding school in Kenyas central Nakuru region has killed at least ten students, emergency services and local media reported on Thursday, in one of the deadliest school fires in the country in recent years.
The blaze broke out at approximately 1 a.m. local time at Utumishi Girls Academy, according to Samuel Ndanyi, the regional police commander, as cited by Capital FM radio. Firefighters and police officers were deployed to control the flames and evacuate students from the burning dormitory.
It is a distressing and saddening situation, county police official Masoud Mwinyi told distraught parents who had gathered outside the school gates, according to Citizen Television.
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. Emergency rescue teams continued to search the dormitory through the early hours of Thursday morning as families waited anxiously for news of their children.
The tragedy echoes a similar disaster in 2024, when a fire at a primary boarding school in the nearby county of Nyeri killed 21 students. That incident prompted national soul-searching over fire safety standards in Kenyas boarding school system, though critics say little has changed in the intervening two years.
Kenya boarding schools, which educate millions of children across the country, have long been criticised for inadequate fire safety infrastructure. Many dormitories are overcrowded, lack smoke detectors, and have limited means of escape, conditions that turn minor incidents into mass-casualty events.
Nakuru County authorities have not yet released the identities of the victims or confirmed the total number of students who were in the dormitory at the time of the fire. Hospitals in the surrounding area have been placed on standby to receive the injured.
The Kenyan government is expected to convene an emergency meeting on school safety following the incident. Education officials and the national police service have both launched investigations into the circumstances surrounding the fire.
Image Source: MYJOYONLINE
