The embers are still hot and smouldering, and the many owners and managers of the cottages, flats and cottages in Silversand wander disconsolately among the dead furniture, skeletons of doors and windows, and monstrous accessories in a gloomy, grey climate that contrasts with the intense blue of the sky reflected in the pools filled with water and ash.
The pools that no one was able to use immediately to extinguish the flames that started on the second floor of the Oasis Village building, because neither the condominium nor the nearby Key Park are equipped with pumps connected to hydrants that could have made up for the chronic delay of the Malindi firefighters. An unused deep-sea fishing boat stands on the beach, its name ("Incubo") tragically recalling Saturday's absurd day.
The next day you wake up but the reality is almost worse than the disaster you witnessed with fear and amazement.
The scenery at Key Park is sad and desolate: only those who were on the spot and arrived in time managed to save a few appliances, chairs, tables and sofas from the fury of the fire and its heat.
The other villas next to mine," an Italian owner told us, "were closed and the owners are not there, so they continued to burn and no one could open them.
A German resident, who has two cottages inside the structure, tells us how the fire destroyed one of her houses, the one facing the road, and saved the cottage nearest the beach. Because that's how it happened: the wind blowing in from the sea took a sine wave turn, entering Key Park from the Oasis and throwing flames and sparks into the street, crossing it from above, first encountering two villas with tiled roofs and then ending its mad dash into the other villas in Key Park 2, opposite Coral Key.
It all started from a single flat and it is absurd that a fire of this magnitude could not be stopped," explains the German lady. "There are many factors that allowed this to happen and we are also partly responsible for not having taken precautions with the pumps.
Among those responsible, however, one cannot fail to mention the county fire service, which once again forfeited. The airport tanker, which has to wait to be available when there are no incoming or outgoing flights, arrived two hours after the fire broke out.
Now the hope is that this umpteenth incident that has left so many people without a bed and without their belongings, will once and for all lead all residents of Malindi to protest vigorously with the Fire Brigade and those who administer it. We therefore call on all the owners of the burnt homes and properties to unite and bring a joint document to the attention of the relevant agencies. Among the offices on the first floor of Oasis Village is that of a lawyer. He should be asked to represent those who have lost millions of dollars in the same and adjacent residences at the same time as, for unspecified reasons, the fire brigade, just a few hundred metres away, was unable to intervene once called.