Fire guts houses in Lang'ata

Seventeen families in Raila village in Lang'ata were left homeless after their houses were razed by a fire on Friday. PHOTO | COLLINS OMULO

Properties of unknown value and at least 60 houses were Friday gutted down in a fire incident at Raila village, Mugumoini Ward, Lang’ata.

Lang’ata MP Nixon Korir said there were no casualties in the incident.

"The fire fighters arrived here in less than 20 minutes and were very swift to put out the fire. It would have been very bad,” Mr Korir said while at the scene of the fire.

Mr Korir said that lack of access to the slum was an obstacle to the fire fighters from Nairobi County who came with two fire engines and an ambulance for those injured to prevent further damages to the residents.

According to Emmanuel Ondieki, a resident, the fire started some minutes to 12 noon and it must have been caused by an electrical fault in one of the electricity lines in the densely populated informal settlement.

“The fire broke out when I was in the house and it must have been caused by the power lines here. We have lost our houses and properties of unknown value,” he said.

Mr Korir appealed to the county government to decentralize fire fighting department and equipment to sub county levels to improve response to such incidences in the future saying that the county has many informal settlements and therefore the fire department should be on alert.

“Moving forward we need to decentralize such equipment so that each constituency has a fire engine, water boozer and ambulance,” he said.

The legislator also called for the developers or landlords to leave areas for access roads while constructing their houses.

At the same time, Mr Korir said that victims of Kijiji fire incident will be resettled by the end of next week and the construction work at the slum will begin on Monday next week after the receipt of the bulk of required construction materials.

He said that the reconstruction committee had been formed to help in the process and already it had received 20,000 iron sheets and are expecting to receive bags of cement either on Friday or Saturday with other building materials like nails and wood to be brought before next week.

“The biggest obstacle in rebuilding the slum is that it is a private land owned by the residents and engaging in building there would bring audit query so we decided to support them in the process rather than build for them,” he said.

Mr Korir said that the county government had drawn a plan to ensure that the reconstructed settlement would be an organized settlement with access roads, social amenities and planned according to the by-laws of the county.

He also said the national government plans to procure the land to do high-rise buildings.