Last week’s Sagana town fire victims have received some first aid assistance from the Kirinyaga County Government.
The assistance consisted of mattresses and an assortment of foodstuffs which were distributed to the victims last evening.
They were rendered homeless by the fire on Wednesday night after their dwellings contained in a commercial cum residential building was razed.
While distributing the aid on behalf of Governor Anne Waiguru who could not present due to exigencies of other official matters, the CEC for Agriculture Jaqueline Njogu said it was unfortunate the families were left destitute by the tragedy.
She however said the county was in the process of ensuring there were mini firefighting engines in every town to cater for any emergency.
“We are presently putting up a modern firefighting facility in Kutus town which is centrally located to respond to any fire disaster within the shortest time possible,” she said.
Njogu added that the Kutus’ fire station will be equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities and will have some boarding rooms where the firefighters will be residing to enable them respond on time to any emergency.
The construction works of the facility have since began and area residents will no longer depend on alternatives from the neighbouring counties, as is currently the case.
During the Sagana incident, fire fighters from the nearby Murang’a town had to be called in to save the situation after a small fire engine the county is depending on got overwhelmed.
The main county fire engine was towed to Nairobi last year after an accident while responding to a fire incident within the outskirts of Kerugoya town.
Last evening the proprietor of the burnt down building Lucy Wanjiru expressed gratitude to the governor for her kind gesture.
“We will forever be grateful to Governor Waiguru for coming to our rescue since coping has been tough since last week when the fire broke out, especially those who used to conduct their business here or resided in the razed rooms,” Wanjiru said.
The building housed a salon, a laundry, a grocery shop, a Radio and TV repair workshop, besides rental rooms whose tenants have now been rendered homeless.
By Irungu Mwangi
