A devastating fire swept through a girls’ boarding school dormitory in Kenya’s Rift Valley overnight, resulting in the deaths of 16 students, officials confirmed on Thursday.
The inferno broke out shortly after midnight at Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil, located in west-central Kenya. According to Education Minister Julius Migos, the flames raged for more than two hours before being brought under control.
Authorities reported that 79 students were injured in the incident. However, Migos noted that 71 of those affected have since been discharged after receiving medical treatment.
Television footage aired across Kenya showed extensive destruction at the scene, including smoke-blackened walls and shattered windows. Distressed parents and guardians gathered outside the school compound, anxiously seeking updates about their children.
School fires have remained a persistent safety concern in Kenya, with official records indicating more than 100 such incidents in 2024 alone. Experts have linked many of these outbreaks to student unrest, often associated with protests over strict disciplinary policies and substandard living conditions.
“Investigations are ongoing, but the identification of the cause of the fire (at Utumishi Girls’ Academy) is not yet identified,” Migos said.
The tragedy comes less than a year after another fatal school fire in neighbouring Nyeri County, where 21 primary school pupils lost their lives. The cause of that earlier blaze was never definitively established.
“The fire started from an upper dome and spread all over within that time,” said Eunice Mureithi, a parent whose daughter managed to escape. She described how parts of the structure blocked exits, trapping some students while others fled to safety.
“It had barricaded a part of the dome to one side and to the other side the students were unable to come out, but a lot of them were able to escape.”
Kenya’s most deadly school fire on record occurred in 2001 at Kyanguli Secondary School near Nairobi, where 67 students died in an arson attack, according to authorities.
