El Siglo Futuro - Kenyan school fires scare away parents

A mass is planned Thursday for the boys, aged nine to 13, killed in an overnight fire in their dormitory at Hillside Endarasha Academy in central Kenya on September 6.

It was a particularly horrific incident -- the victims burnt beyond recognition, requiring DNA to be identified.

But school fires are far from rare in Kenya -- there have been more than a dozen this year alone.

There were 63 arson cases at schools recorded in 2018, and no less than 117 in just a three-month period in 2016.

Most seem to target boarding schools, of which Kenya has thousands as a colonial legacy of missionaries and the British.

Many parents still see boarding schools as prestigious and practical.

Silvana Wachira, a 47-year-old receptionist, put her three children in a boarding school near Nairobi to spare them from the city's infernal traffic.

"But it is not worth the lives of my babies," she said, adding that the accounts from Hillside "broke my heart into pieces".

Phineas Ojwang', whose 11-year-old attends a primary school 400 kilometres (250 miles) away from his home in western Kenya, told AFP he will likewise pull his daughter out at the end of the year.

"I sleep a worried man. I have the matron on speed dial to check on my daughter," he told AFP.

- Arson -

Investigators have yet to say what caused the Hillside fire, but the power company has ruled out an electrical fault.

In many cases, the children are to blame.

In 2017, 10 children died in a fire at a prestigious Nairobi school. A 14-year-old with a history of clashes with the school was eventually found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.

Pupils were also accused after a 2001 dormitory fire in the southern county of Machakos killed 67.

A 2017 report by Kenya's National Crime Research Centre blamed exam stress and long terms, and said students in different schools were communicating via smuggled phones, leading to copycat acts.

In the two days after the Hillside tragedy, there were at least two more fires at boarding schools in other counties.

"Fires are contagious," said Pius Masai Mwachi, a former acting director of Kenya's national disaster management unit.

He said students often shared their frustrations with each other, encouraging what he called "young criminals" to vent them through arson.

But "school staff and outsiders" were also sometimes responsible, Mwachi added.

- Enforcement -

The government has promised a safety audit of all schools and to prosecute violators.

But critics say they hear the same promises after every tragedy.

Most schools lack access to experts who could help prevent such incidents, said Mwachi.

"Institutions must periodically conduct emergency training and drills," he told AFP, calling for "100 percent enforcement" of safety guidelines.

There have also been repeated calls to ban boarding schools, especially at primary level, with suggestions that abandonment issues could be partly to blame.

Whatever the causes, Ojwang' said he will no longer take the risk with his daughter.

"I am counting the days to the end of term. It will be her last day in boarding school," he said.

M.F.Ramírez--ESF