• National government has widened road, improved markings and signage to make it safer. More improvements planned,
• Nominated MCA Rachel Maru says victims neglected and her appeals to build a trauma centre have fallen on deaf ears.
Image: FILE
A huge slab of concrete by the roadside marks the mass grave of 78 victims of the Sachangwan fuel tanker fire 11 years ago.
They had been incinerated and couldn't be identified for individual burials.
At least 111 people were killed and hundreds injured in Molo on the busy Nakuru-Eldoret highway on January 31, 2009 — many died as they tried to scoop and siphon the fuel that they so desperately needed. It was a stampede.
It was Kenya's worst tanker fire, a testament to the poverty that drives people to risk their lives to steal a potentially deadly substance.
The accident occurred in a blackspot, the site of crashes for many years. The national government has widened the road and increased markings and signage to ensure drivers are more careful.
Rehabilitation works have also involved the conversion of the Mau Summit junction and Ngata into a dual carriageway. There are also plans for the road to be redsigned to separate trucks from small vehicles to save more lives.
But memories of the tanker crash remain vivid. Survivors will never forget that fireball and they bear the physical scars that they cover with clothing and hats and the psychological wounds that still have not healed.
A woman who lost her husband and children. A man who encouraged his children to scoop up gasoline and lost them. A child who lost her parents. A man so disfigured his fiancee turned away and no woman will marry him.
It was a fine Saturday like any other at Sachangwan trading centre when a petrol-carrying tanker from Eldoret to Nakuru overturned shortly after 6pm, spilling its highly flammable contents. It burst into flames an hour later
Nominated MCA Rachel Maru told the Star the victims have been neglected and no effort has been made to turn the pain of the accident into something good — like building a trauma centre, for example.
Other than the Sh50,000 the Kibaki-Raila government gave to families affected in 2009, no victim has been compensated, she said.
"I have personally struggled to lobby for a trauma centre established here as a way of memorialising the accident, to no avail," Maru said on Thursday.
"It increasingly appears no one cares."
A trauma centre, she said, would not only help victims who still need counselling, but also serve the community in the long run.
"The youths from this area, most of whom were young 11 years ago, bear the scars of the burns. Some are disfigured. They are greatly discriminated against when they look for jobs as people perceive them to be thieves," she explained.
Yet others, due to the wounds, cannot be in the scorching sun for long during their day's work.
Maru said she has tried to liaise with the governor to no avail. "Though the governor [Lee Kinyanjui]iappears to have the goodwill to do something to help, the people that he gives work to have failed him," she said.
Despite the glaring, life-threatening danger, resident at the shopping centre saw an opportunity for fuel to use or well. They caused a stampede as they rushed to syphon the fuel into jerrycans.
Then one of man approached the site smoking. The tanker burst into flames at about 7pm. The ferocious flames aggressively followed the trail of spilt fuel to neighbouring homes and the forest where the loot was kept.
Those carrying the jerrycans and anyone near the tanker or fleeing before it exploded were consumed by flames, most burnt beyond recognition.
Motorists in two cars who had stopped to view the spectacle also perished as the fire caught up with them.
Rift Valley provincial commissioner Hassan Noor Hassan and Red Cross officials counted 91 bodies burnt beyond recognition the following day.
Another 20 victims succumbed in hospitals.
(Edited by V. Graham)