Passengers aboard a Nairobi bound bus had to scramble to safety after an electrical utility pole came crashing down on their vehicle.
The incident caused a scare and a huge traffic along the busy Sheikh Abdalla Farsi road junction in Mombasa Island.
Due to the damage to the pole, the power supply in the vicinity was obstructed as the incident slowed down traffic in the area.
The passenger bus had earlier left Mtwapa Township and was passing through Mombasa’s central business district to pick more passengers before leaving for the capital city Nairobi.
The shaken driver who identified himself only as Waithaka recounted to journalists how he heard a loud bang when the pole came down and landed on the roof of the bus.
“I had to stop on impact and the panicky passengers on board disembarked in a hurry as there was a brief electric spark,” he recounted.
According to the driver, 20 people were traveling in the bus during the incident who all escaped unscathed albeit terribly shaken by the ordeal.
The incident led to a huge vehicular traffic before Kenya Power and fire brigade personnel arrived to disentangle the ill-fated bus from the electric wires.
An eyewitness, Shahid Abdalla and a resident of Bondeni area of Mombasa near the scene of incident blamed Kenya Power for failing to fix old and unsafe power poles in the area despite several complaints to the power firm.
By Hussein Abdullahi
