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Kenyan Man in New Jersey House Fire is dead
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 03 October 2007 01:51
The burns were very severe, he had second to third degree burns. His scalp was burnt; his fingers were burnt to the bone; his back, hands and knees, ears and nose were also seriously burned. He was in a critical condition.
The fire department who responded to the fire alarm found him unconscious, not breathing and lying on the floor of his 2nd floor apartment of the four storey building at 18 Fulton Avenue, Jersey City. The fire department rushed him to Jersey City Medical Centre where they were not able to do much and he was therefore flown to St. Barnabas Medical Centre in Livingston, New Jersey. He was put on the ventilator and the doctors set about stabilizing him. It was after two days that he was stabilized and this is when his family was allowed to see him.
The fire department put the apartment under investigation until now. Earlier the fire department spokesman was reported as saying that the fire was suspicious but now they are saying it may be accidental. What they need to determine is the cause of the fire.
Public Eye spoke to his brother, Ben Makori, who informed us of the treatment that Emmanuel had undergone in the week he had been in hospital. The doctors could not do anything until they had stabilized him, and so on Thursday the 11th of January, they began full treatment. He had been on a ventilator but to make it easier for him to breath, they elected to do a tracheotomy( putting a hole in the throat and inserting a breathing tube through it). They then separated his fingers to enable independent new tissue growth.
They had to wait for another full week for the swelling in his face to go down so they could begin grafting his skin onto the burnt tissue. So this past Thursday, the 18th, they took him into surgery again to do that. In the course of the week, he had developed pneumonia, which the doctors said was to be expected because of the damage to his lungs occasioned by the smoke inhalation in the fire. He also had a high temperature due to the fact that he was heavily bandaged on all the areas that he had suffered burns.
On Friday, the 19th, Ben received a call from one of Emmanuel’s doctors telling him that his blood pressure was dropping at an alarming rate. He rushed to the hospital where the doctors were in a concerted effort to save him. His immune system was weakened, leading to the lowering blood pressure. This meant that his crucial organs were not receiving enough blood flow and gradually, they started failing. His kidneys first, his lungs, liver and finally his heart gave out. Emmanuel passed away at 8:45 PM eastern time. Throughout his ordeal, Emmanuel never regained consciousness.
Emmanuel Makori was born on the 9th of July, 1985 in Kinshasa, Zaire (the Democratic Republic of Congo) where his father was a diplomat at the time. He is survived by his parents, two brothers and a sister
