We are playing stupidly with fire

By Oyunga Pala

It is difficult to be optimistic about the bright future when the country’s biggest airport goes ablaze, and the most we can do is stare helplessly. .

When the arrivals unit of the JKIA caught fire last week, I was not surprised by the response. The signs were all there for us to see. The ridiculous tussle for the duty free shops, the stinking toilets that had no water, poorly lit corridors and just a few days before the fire, there was a jet fuel shortage that had athletes headed to Moscow delayed for hours.

Bad Joke

The fire broke out at 5am and three hours later, it was still raging mostly because the fire hydrants were out of water. It read like bad joke. We are pretty fortunate that no passengers or airport staff suffered causalities, or died and everyone near the scene was evacuated to safety. An airport official who noticed smoke billowing from the terminal detected the fire. We could conclude the nameless individual turned to be the only functioning ‘fire detector”. The fire brigade was called but they were ineffective because the water hydrants were dry.

The head of security at the Kenya Airports Authority Eric Kiraithe was quoted by the dailies saying, “By our own standards this is so big”. You would think JKIA was bombed. I suppose like most Kenya tragedies, it will be blamed on an ‘electric fault”. JKIA really has no standards. We now have to brace ourselves for the embarrassment of a burnout arrival terminal. It won’t, however, be long before a commission is set up and the usual pledge to leave no stone unturned made. We have been through this rant of disaster preparedness for too long.

For the ordinary Kenyan, fire tragedies have become normalised much like the road carnage and economic sabotage by the political elite.

I guess out here, where there is smoke, we quickly run in to stock the fire. Only one month ago, the Kenya National Brigades Association sounded the siren. The gist of the statement was that they were no functioning fire engines. We were treated to an even more ludicrous expose and an example of classic systemic greed. Three fire engines were auctioned after the council failed to settle a bill of Sh7,400. Another engine was sold after failure to settle a bill of Sh29, 660.

Dire

 The Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero admitted that the situation was dire and as expected, a promise was made, in essence, that the county government would be receiving donations from various well wishers. As we all know, nothing was done and after the fire at JKIA, we expect the usual plea for divine intervention, “This is not the time to blame one another. We need to come together as Kenyans and pray for our country”.

A series of measures will be announced, which will amount to nothing. A scapegoat will be arraigned  most likely an electrical fault  and counter accusations will feature in the news cycle until the next big news item shifts our attention.

The siren has been sounded, there is a fire in the distance and no one is running.