e Jomo Kenyatta International Airport will not resume normal operations for a pretty long time after the massive blaze on Wednesday morning that destroyed the international arrivals unit. From preliminary assessments, it will take a complete rebuilding of critical areas of the airport, not just patchwork repairs, to restore full functions. That will take a great deal of time and money. The effects, especially at the onset of the peak tourism season, are incalculable for an airport that is the main gateway to Kenya and a vital air transport hub for a vast hinterland across the wider East and Central African region. That fire was thus a major disaster affecting business travellers, tourists, transit passengers, airlines, tour operators, cargo transport and a vast array of businesses and services that serve the airport. There must be some lessons to learn from a disaster of such magnitude. Investigations are in the very early stages, but we expect that no resources will be spared in the effort to discover what caused the fire. All the skills and expertise available must be deployed in this very urgent exercise. Investigations must look not only at what caused the fire, but also the efforts to contain it and the general emergency response and disaster preparedness. While it may be too early to start apportioning blame, a key area for the investigators, as suggested by early eye witness accounts, must be on whether there was an element of negligence. MANY INDEPENDENT REPORTS SEEM TO concur that a small fire in the Immigration area at arrivals was allowed to spiral out of control as airport staff failed to take prompt action. And once the fire started getting bigger, there are reports that the automatic sprinkler systems did not work. It also seems that it took too long to deploy the airport fire brigade, and that once the fire fighters were on the scene, the hydrants that should make available powerful jets of water from underground reservoirs turned up empty. This apparently limited the fire-fighting effort to only the water carried in the fire trucks and what could be brought in on bowsers. If there were indeed such glaring failures, they stand as severe indictments of the JKIA and the Kenya Airport Authority management. It may also be emblematic of the casual manner in which many of our strategic installations are managed. Any airport, especially a busy international gateway, is not just a stage for airplane passengers to embark and disembark. Security must be paramount against all manner of threats. That means a state of eternal vigilance to prevent any incidents; together with the appropriate responses in the event of anything untoward. If it turns out that the disaster on Wednesday was made worse by critical failures within JKIA operations; those culpable must be called to account. The investigation must go beyond the cause of the fire, to a wider enquiry on the security and disaster prevention and response readiness at the JKIA and other airports across the country. It can come up with valuable findings and recommendations that should be relevant to all other strategic facilities that also serve large numbers of civilians
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 12:56:00 +0000