Tears and silence replaced laughter in Nairobi’s Mathare B on Monday, as dawn broke over the charred remains of homes, five lives lost and four people injured.
From humble homes and business premises, it is back to square one for the victims who now hope the county government and the local administrative structures will come to their aid, support their rebuilding and for the bereaved, help foot the last expenses.
Jerry Wanyoike was lucky to have escaped with his life and his loved ones.
Too traumatised to speak, the only word he could afford when asked to explain what happened was “I’m back to where I was.”
Where he was in this case was unemployment and depending on relatives to help him.
His motorbike, which he used to eke a living to support his one child and wife, went up in smoke in the inferno.
Wanyoike, 30, will have to find another source of living and repaying the loan he used to buy the motorbike.
It is the same tragedy for Joyce Atieno whose business premise went up in the flames. She operated a hotel in the area but her items and supplies got burnt.
“The hotel was my all. I used it to support my family and my ailing father back in Bungoma. Now all is gone and poverty is back,” she said.
The blaze, which erupted at around 2 am on Monday, tore through the tightly packed iron-sheet homes of the informal settlement, reducing lives to smouldering ash.
What once bustled with family life became eerily quiet—punctuated only by sobs and the crackle of settling debris.
“It happened so fast,” said a resident. “We woke up to screams, smoke and flames. There was no time to save anything.”
Fire engines from the military and the Nairobi county raced to the scene to battle the inferno, which consumed at least eight homes and two churches before the fire was brought under control.
“We understand the victims were sleeping when the fire broke out, killing five of them. Four others are in hospital with serious injuries,” Nairobi police boss George Sedah said at the scene.
The injured were taken to the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital nearby for emergency care. Police say the fire is believed to have started in one of the iron-sheet structures and spread rapidly, fuelled by the flammable materials and the close proximity of homes.
By morning, the air still carried the acrid smell of smoke. Families trickled back, some in tears, others in shock, to search for anything salvageable—clothes, documents, a photograph.
Sedah said the five bodies were taken to the mortuary, pending postmortem and further investigations into the fire’s cause.
Police have launched a probe into the origin of the fire, though residents say they’ve seen this tragedy repeat itself too many times. In Mathare, fire is a familiar enemy—and one that often wins.
This latest loss comes just hours after another fire broke out at Gikomba Market on Sunday morning. Flames engulfed the footwear section near Lamu Road in Majengo, Pumwani, sending vendors and residents scrambling.
“A massive fire erupted in the footwear section of Gikomba Market, adjacent to Lamu Road in Majengo in Pumwani at around 3 am. The county fire engine has arrived, and firefighters and local volunteers are battling to put out the inferno,” Kamukunji MP Yusuf Hassan said.
Thankfully, no casualties were reported in the Gikomba fire, but the damage dealt another blow to traders already struggling to make ends meet.
Back in Mathare, amid twisted metal and soot-covered memories, residents asked once again what it would take for meaningful change—especially the long-promised access roads, that could allow faster emergency response.
Their voices, like the smoke, rose into the morning sky—raw, desperate and unanswered.
