One person has died after a container full of petrol exploded at the Mokowe jetty on Friday afternoon.
Mohamed Farid, 16, was inside the container.
The Form 3 student was the son of the owner of the container where the fuel was being offloaded.
A faulty generator pumping fuel from a lorry into the container is said to have produced sparks that caused the explosion. The youth was holding the fuel pipe.
A 36-year-old man is admitted at Lamu King Fahad Hospital in Lamu town with serious burns.
The container was holding 26 barrels of fuel, amounting to 500 litres of petrol.
The lorry was delivery fuel from Mombasa.
The body of the deceased was taken to the King Fahad Hospital.
Mokowe Offloaders Association chairman Athman Yusuf, who witnessed the incident, said rescue was impossible as the youth was inside the container.
It was impossible to put out the fire.
Residents have blamed the county government for failing to respond to the tragedy hours after it happened.
“We haven’t witnessed any response from the county till now. The fire is still raging as you can see,” Omar Abdalla said on Friday.
The Mokowe jetty on Lamu’s mainland has at least four petrol containers.
Residents want regulations in place to control such business ventures.
“This incident needs to teach us that we need to have a plan for such a business. We have people running petrol containers but we have no absolute plan on how to deal with a fire like this,” Abdalla said.
(Edited by R.Wamochie)
