Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The First Account of Goings-on at Kenyatta National Hospital Few Moments After the Blast



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.  

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