Poor planning, encroachment contribute to flood crisis

Last week’s raging floods in the Kenyan capital — the worse in recent memory — demonstrated just how low we have sunk as a nation when we displayed for the umpteenth time how ill-prepared we are to handle natural disasters.

After 48 hours of sustained rainfall, Nairobi was brought down to its knees. Deaths by drowning, flooding in homes, nightmarish traffic jams on our roads, blocked drains and power outages that lasted several days in some suburbs—this was the scenario in a metropolis that is no longer living under the illusion that it is the green city in the sun.