Fire tore through residential buildings in the Posta area of Kangemi, Nairobi, on Thursday, August 13, with several people feared trapped inside as thick plumes of smoke rose over the informal settlement.
Images from the scene showed flames and smoke snaking through the closely packed structures, located behind Posta at Kangemi Shopping Centre along Waiyaki Way. Residents were seen running from the affected buildings, with some attempting to salvage household items even as the fire continued to spread. Others raised the alarm over people believed still trapped inside, deepening fears of possible casualties.
County fire response teams arrived at the scene and were battling the blaze, though the cause had not been established by the time of publishing. Neither the exact number of people trapped nor any casualties had been confirmed. Some accounts from the ground suggested residents were left to fight the flames largely on their own, using buckets of water while waiting for emergency responders to gain control of the inferno.
The affected area forms part of the Kangemi Informal Settlement, one of Nairobi’s largest urban settlements, sitting in a valley between high-end estates like Mountain View. Most structures there are semi-permanent, corrugated iron sheet shacks built over wooden framing or mud walls, many standing on private ancestral land where residents rent from local landlords.
Thursday’s blaze is far from an isolated case. Kangemi has endured a string of destructive fires in 2026 alone, from a February blaze along Marega Road suspected to have been sparked by a cooking gas explosion, to an April wildfire in the Dam View settlement that left an estimated 700 families homeless, and a May fire in Waruku that razed 20 houses and 11 businesses.
Residents and officials have repeatedly linked the settlement’s fire risk to illegal power connections, as many households, unable to afford official electricity fees, resort to unauthorised grid tapping. The resulting poorly insulated, overloaded wiring has been blamed for short circuits that spark fires in the tightly packed structures.
As emergency crews continued working to contain Thursday’s fire, questions remained over how long residents of one of Nairobi’s most fire-prone settlements will keep facing the same disaster.
