A 46-year-old woman has lost her three children in a night inferno in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Nairobi.
An emotional Everlyn Chibutsa said she lost the children when a fire broke out while she was out for business on Monday night.

The children; Mitchell Ikunza (16), Bellamy Chinaida (8) and Delvin Myles (4), were in Form 2, Grade 2 and Playgroup, respectively.

The inferno, according to residents, broke out at around 7.30pm.

“My Form 2 daughter left home for school at around 6.30am while I personally took her PP2 and Playgroup siblings to school on Monday morning before I left for my hustle never to see them alive again,” Chibutsa said.

Chibutsa said the children used to return home for lunch in her single-roomed mabati house that she pays Sh1,800 house rent monthly.

She said the elder daughter always picks up her siblings from school on her way home on a daily basis.
The single mother said she hawks mitumba (second hand clothes) to earn a living and fend for her children.

“When I was returning at night, I heard a siren from that direction and I became anxious. I asked a passerby and she confirmed some houses were on fire in the area we live,” Chibutsa said.

She said she was shocked to find that a school, church and the entire plot where they lived had been razed.

“The fire had consumed our residences and spread to the neighbouring plot. I launched a search for my three children in vain. All those I asked said they hadn’t seen them,” she said.

Thereafter she called some relatives who live in the Pipeline and Tassia estates, but none had seen the children.

“I thought the children had sought refuge in my relatives houses after my house got burned, but it wasn’t so,” she said.

Kwa Njenga Ward MCA Kimondu Kiragu visited the scene and promised to mobilise help for the distraught residents.