Two children die in Gachie fire, three-year-old sister rescued
Three men are being praised for risking their lives to rescue a three-year-old girl from a burning fourth-floor apartment in Gachie, Kiambu County.
However, the rescue ended in tragedy after the girl’s two siblings died in the fire, leaving their family demanding answers.
The incident happened last Saturday at around 5pm after children playing nearby noticed smoke coming from the apartment where the three children were trapped.
One of the rescuers, Joash Ondieki, said he could not ignore the little girl’s cries for help.
He joined others in rushing to the building, forcing open the gate and heading upstairs as flames spread through the house.
They found the girl stranded on the balcony with fire closing in.
One man carefully lowered her to the third floor, where Kevin Bahati and another rescuer waited to receive her before rushing her to hospital for first aid.
“I did not want to fail that child who was staring at us asking ‘please help, please help.’ I had to do it,” Ondieki said.
Bahati explained that the men used a curtain to help secure the child during the rescue as they worked to get her away from the flames.
However, they were unable to reach her two siblings, Tehilla Wambui and Angela Njeri, who remained trapped inside the house. Both children died in the fire, and their bodies were later taken to Nairobi Funeral Home for a postmortem examination.
Their father, Kennedy Njau, is now calling for a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy. He told journalists that the children’s mother had said she locked them inside the house before leaving, expecting a househelp to arrive.
Njau said the children had been under their mother’s care over the weekend and that he wanted detectives at Kihara Police Station to establish how the fire started and why the children were left inside.
He appealed for the case not to be forgotten, stressing that two innocent lives had been lost.
A postmortem examination established that the children died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The family is preparing to bury them as police investigations continue.