Put safety first and avoid being swept away by floods

Flash floods ravaging parts of the country are causing untold damage to property and suffering.

By Monday, disaster support agencies such as the Red Cross were inundated with emergency calls as mudslides, drownings and floods rendered hundreds of Kenyan families homeless.

In Nyando and Nyakach, where perennial floods have often hampered economic activity when the River Nyando bursts its banks, evacuation centres have been set up, and local leaders have appealed to those residing along rivers to move to higher ground.

The story of misery

Urban centres have not been spared from the effects of the recent deluge as city estates have been inundated with water as blocked drains and choked sewers redirect rain water into homes, damaging furniture and other property.

In a nutshell, the story of misery is being replicated across the country when Kenyans should be making merry as they usher in a new year.

Many parts of the country have undergone some form of disaster, and although the most common calamities are weather-related natural phenomenon such as landslides, drought and floods, man-caused interventions have also contributed, leading to land degradation and deforestation of water catchment systems.

The consequences of such disasters are enormous —disruption of human settlement and destruction of shelter, damage to infrastructure, disease outbreaks, crop failures and desecration of the environment — all leading to great human distress and suffering.

To cope with such hazards, the Government has formulated a national policy on disaster management, well captured in this policy framework document.

Whether such knowledge has been internalised by residents of disaster-prone areas is another matter.