ESR CLOSE UP

It came as a surprise to no one that Kenya's police and firefighters arrived late to the scene when a powerful explosion ripped through the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi's bustling downtown business district. And few were amazed when members of the paramilitary General Service Unit started beating back the crowd -- volunteer rescuers included -- with wooden clubs.

Residents of the Kenyan capital are used to inept and bribe-demanding police and brutal GSU troops -- and to a municipal infrastructure that is crumbling into ruins and incapable of responding to disasters like the one that struck on 7 August. But the city -- where office workers wait for hours in the dark for packed, unsafe buses, fearing attacks by gangs of muggers -- surprised itself with the sheer courage and resourcefulness of its inhabitants.

After the bomb went off, many Kenyans rushed in to help transport the wounded, comfort the terrified and dig furiously in the rubble to save those trapped by mounds of debris. Cars and pickup trucks were commandeered to take the wounded to the hospital. Doors left hanging on their hinges were ripped off to serve as makeshift stretchers to carry the injured to first aid stations set up by volunteer groups.

A female doctor dressed in surgical blues, a white shower cap and wearing sunglasses was eased down by soldiers as she picked her way through the rubble of the crushed Ufundi House. And teen-agers lay down on mats in central Uhuru Park, bravely thrusting out their arms and clenching their fists to donate blood.

There has been no shortage of disasters in Kenya this year.

In the past year, the country has been wracked by politically inspired ethnic violence that has left several hundred people dead. Then the El Nino weather phenomenon brought heavy rains and flooding to many parts of the country that bred disease, killed livestock and rotted crops in the fields.

Portions of the main highway linking Nairobi and the port of Mombasa were washed away several times. Repairs have been slow in coming.

A headline in the Daily Nation newspaper asked: "How ready are we for disasters?"

Police and firefighters find themselves with broken-down vehicles or none at all, no gasoline to make them run and poor or nonexistent communications equipment. But even when things were working better in Kenya, there were too many conflicting authorities to permit a rapid and seamless response to a major disaster.