Kenyan Airport Set on Fire

What started as a modest fire on Wednesday morning at around 5.00am quickly developed into a blazing inferno that engulfed almost the entire arrivals section of the Jomo Kenyatta Airport. The origins of the fire still remain unknown. However, as I was watching NTV this morning on my way to work, I saw a manageable problem grow into a huge economic disaster. By the time I reached my workplace at 9.00am, it was evident that most of the arrivals section of the airport was badly singed.

So how did something so moderate erupt into such a great catastrophe? According to the news report, the fault was with the Fire department which took a long time to respond to the alert. This is worrying for travellers and people who rely on the safety assurances of the police and fire department – in one word, everybody. Shouldn’t there have been some standby firefighters in the airport who could have made a quicker response? What justifies such a delay? Did they just believe that the fire, which was originally so small, could not become a great problem?

17 HOURS LATER

The airport has since resumed its domestic flights. However, firefighters were still on the scene, trying to extinguish what remained of the fire. Most of the flights were diverted to the Mombasa, Kisumu, Tanzania and Uganda airports. 

LETS COUNT THE LOSSES

There is primarily the obvious loss of millions of shillings in infrastructure. To reconstruct the area will take a substantial amount of money, and really, its anyone’s guess where that will come from considering the fact that the government is still fishing for money through bills that should increase taxes to fund various ongoing problems (I mean projects).

To keep it short, other consequences include:

• Inconvenience to passangers and travelling business people
• Inconvenience to trade by flight
• Aviation stakeholders and potential stock market losses
• Estimated millions lost from businesses in the airport (and potentiall business days lost)
• Fruit and Flower farmers will probably feel the pinch a bit
• Inconvenience for students like me, hoping to fly abroad to resume studies (though probably the smallest problem of all)
• Tourism losses 

The tourism sector poses a major potential loss according to the media. What makes this situation worse is the fact that August is the season of the Wildebeest migration; one of the great wonders of the world, and a significant contributor to the economy. Every year, a myriad of tourists flock to the Mara to watch this great spectacle. Having been there last year, I can assure you that it is a great attraction, and even getting a room in any resort can be a hassle. But how many tourists would you imagine are now in the process of cancelling their Kenyan visits?  

SOLUTIONS? FOR ONE, CRITICAL THINKING IN DESIGN

 As an aspiring architect, I had to touch on this. There was a report on Citizen TV at 9.00pm that one of the causes of the quick spread of the fire was the bitumen on the ceiling of the airport. Bitumen, also known as asphalt is used for waterproofing roofs. However, this event shows that perhaps we should be thinking of other sustainable and safe ways of designing, using non-flammable materials, which are not sourced from crude oil.Another problem – and yes, its actually a design problem – was the fact that the airport was designed to accommodate 2.5 million people, but actually hosts 6 million people a year. That’s bound to cause a safety hazard. It puts more people in danger, but at the same time has the potential of making it more difficult to deal with such problems in a hasty manner. Yet, truthfully, people probably never noticed. Aside from the occasional long queues and check in time (depending on time and flight), this has not been a significant problem worth mentioning until now. I’m just wondering why, if the number of people increased, the safety measures did not mirror that growth. Simple things like more fire extinguishers, hoses, etc, could have probably made a difference. When I saw the picture of the fire at its inception, it looked no bigger than a Honda CRV (I use that comparison because that’s the make of my mums car, and I explained it to her like so). 
However, the biggest blessing in all of this is that no casualties were reported. My hope is that it remains the same. There have been plans to expand the airport, but that has taken a significant amount of time, and this setback is bound to, well, set us back some more. I can only hope that we have learned from this mistake, and will take greater precautions ensuring the public’s safety.  

Nevertheless, 
Stay Sweet

xxx