There was a huge feel of anxiety at Kenyatta National
Hospital Accident and Emergency entrance as the injured of yesterday’s
Nairobi’s blast were transported in.
Hundreds of bystanders milled around the entrance with
their crestfallen faces looking at the arriving ambulances. Silence befell the
hospital’s section as most of the onlookers placed their hands on their cheeks
with their visibly awestruck faces affixed on the happenings at the door.
There was a lot of shoving as the hospital staff asked
people to give way but they hardly succeeded.
With every disembarking the people ran over to check
the individual received by the eagerly waiting hospital staff, themselves
conversing in low tones.
After a while, the fast ballooning crowd was chased by
administration police and county council askaris who had joined the staff to
keep the eager faces at bay but every arrival of an injured individual the
crowd ran over to check. So eager were them that they often confused other
emergency drive-ins for the blast victims and ran to check on them before they
were turned away by the staff.
Police Commissioner Matthew Iteere arrived few minutes
after the blast went off and hurriedly walked into the
casualty section accompanied by a thinly-veiled security detail that
nonetheless kept eager journalists from getting near him. Journalists were once
locked out of a room that had just received an injured individual.
The hospital nurses were as active and organised as
they received the injured from the ambulances and rushed them to the
designated wards as per their level of injuries.
Once Mr Iteere addressed a media conference and played
down the rumours that it was bomb blast saying it was neither it nor a grenade
attack, the fast sombre mood that had engulfed the atmosphere receded and jubilant faces slowly came fore. His words had spread fast that it was not a serious
explosion as of a bomb or a grenade. The crowd dispersed slowly as most lost
interest.
