Fire guts down section of Nakumatt in Eldoret

Police officers and members of the public mill outside Nakumatt Supermarket when one of its office caught fire and destroyed properties worth hundreds of shillings in Eldoret.  PHOTO: COURTESY

Eldoret, Kenya: A fire on Monday morning gut down  a section of of Nakumatt Holdings in Eldoret town center.

The fire which broke out at around 7am is believed  to have originated at the manager’s office and later flames spread to the  Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Control Room.

According to the OCPD Eldoret East Nelson Taliti, the cause of the fire had not yet been established and  that it was still under investigation.

“The cause of the fire has not yet been known. We are working really hard to ensure that we get to the bottom of this. We want to assure the residents that they have no reason to worry as everything is under control,” Taliti said.

He added that the estimated loss according to the manager was approximately over half a million shillings.

Johnson Mureithi the manager of the household stated that he did not know what caused the fire as they were still investigating. He  added that it will take time to determine the cause of the fire as the CCTV room was destroyed.

“We dont know what exactly caused the fire. It will take time to determine what caused it as the CCTV room was burnt,” Mureithi said.

He added that  no one was hurt  as they managed to evacuate everyone in the building safely. He said that there were customers at that time as the supermaket operates 24/7 but they were lucky as all of them heeded when the alarm went off.

“ We managed to secure both our customers and our employees in time. We are glad everybody heeded to the call to move out before the fire caught up with them,”he said.

According to  both the the OCPD and the Manager, the firebrigade from Eldoret town responded really fast and were able to contain the fire before it caused more damage.

They called on the residents to calm down as everything was under control.