Into Africa

By Colin Mardell

A deadly fire in a Tanzanian school and the consequent investigation by a senior British fire officer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: APS Publications
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201106867

Book preview

An account of the investigation by a British fire officer into a fire in Tanzania which killed forty-three schoolchildren with sad regard for the forty-three young victims of poverty and ignorance.

1

ONE SULTRY Friday afternoon in late June 1994 the telephone rang. I was at home, uncomfortably occupied with a seemingly never-ending series of tedious household and gardening chores. The temperature was twenty-six-degrees so I was grateful for the distraction and hurried to answer it. 

It was the Assistant Chief Officer’s personal assistant. ‘Mr Mardell?’  she said. ‘The ACO would like to speak with you, if you’ll wait a moment I’ll put him through.’

Although at that time I had served in the London Fire Brigade for 27 years and had reached what I regarded as an exulted position in my profession, it was not an everyday occurrence to be telephoned at home by a principal officer.  I was therefore more than a little curious about the purpose of the call.  After a few bars of Handel’s ‘Water Music’ (or whatever the piped music of the day was), ACO Smith came on the line. 

‘Good afternoon Colin.  How are you?’ he started. 

‘A bit hot and bothered to be truthful,’ I replied. ‘But otherwise fine thank you Sir.’

‘Don’t you like the heat then?’

‘Not particularly, Sir.  It gives me a rash.’

‘You wouldn’t be interested in a trip to Tanzania for the Brigade then?’

Anybody who knows me can testify I am not a person frequently lost for words.  However, I have to admit there was a more than a momentary hesitation before I replied that notwithstanding my aversion to warm climates, I most certainly would be interested.  I had resisted the temptation to ask if he had been joking.  As most people would guess, principal officers of one of the world’s biggest and busiest fire services rarely find the time to interrupt their busy schedule to play practical jokes on their staff.

The ACO explained that the Brigade had been approached by the Tanzanian Government via our Prime Minister (John Major) and the Foreign Office for assistance.  There had been a fire in a school and forty-three schoolchildren had died.  It had occurred a week or so beforehand and the authorities had had no success in defining its cause.  The ACO advised me to give the matter full consideration, to discuss the matter with my family and to inform him later that evening whether I was prepared to go.  Meanwhile I was to make urgent enquiries how to obtain the necessary immunisation before any trip could take place. 

‘When would I be expected to leave?’  I asked.

ACO Smith replied that he was not sure of all the details at that stage but I would be expected to fly out the following week and be away for at least four or five days.  He added that he hoped to have more information from the Foreign Office within the following day or two.

Putting the phone down, I stopped for a few minutes to take it all in.  My wife was not home from work so I was unable to immediately drop the bombshell on her.  I rang the British Airways Travel Clinic who advised me that I needed to be protected against practically every dreadful disease that I had ever heard of, and some that I hadn’t.  I was later to find that this would involve sticking needles in nearly every exposed (and unexposed) part of my anatomy and swallowing a cocktail of pills and potions. 

At the time of these events, I was serving as a Divisional Officer in the London Fire Brigade, posted to the Fire Safety Engineering Section at Headquarters in