• The incident took place at around 12.30pm.The deceased, Mohamed Farid 16,was a form three student in the town.
• A faulty generator which was being used to pump the fuel from a lorry into the container is said to have produced sparks of fire that later caused an explosion
One person has died after a container full of petrol exploded at the Mokowe jetty area on Friday afternoon.
The incident took place at around 12.30pm. The deceased, Mohamed Farid 16,was a form three student in the town.
He is the son of the owner of the container where the fuel was being offloaded.
A faulty generator which was being used to pump the fuel from a lorry into the container is said to have produced sparks of fire that later caused an explosion that killed the deceased who had been holding the fuel pipe.
A 36 year old man is nursing serious burns at the Lamu King Fahad hospital.The container had been holding 26 drums of fuel which is equal to 500 liters of petrol when it exploded.
The body of the deceased has been taken to the King Fahad hospital in Lamu town while the injured man is also admitted at the same facility.
No fire fighting vehicles have responded to the fire until the time of going to press.The chairperson of the Mokowe Offloaders Association Athman Yusuf who witnessed the incident said it was hard for them to rescue the late as he was inside the container when the explosion happened.
“He was inside the container holding onto the pipe as the fuel offloaded together with the injured man.We were unable to do anything as the explosion was abrupt and the fire fierce.Our efforts to put out the fire weren’t fruitful,”said Athman.
The lorry had come from Mombasa to deliver the fuel before the fateful incident.Locals 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,”said Omar Abdalla who witnessed.
The Mokowe jetty area on Lamu’s mainland has at least 4 petrol containers.Locals want regulations put in place to control and regulate the establishment of such business ventures.
“This incident needs to teach us that we need to have a plan for such business.We have people running petrol containers but we have no absolute plan on how to deal with a fire like this,”said Abdalla.