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.

Although some may argue that storms and natural calamities are acts of God of which we can do little to mitigate, the seasonal long rains had been long expected, even anticipated by farmers getting ready to plant their crop. Yet we were caught flat-footed. Again. Many of the drains in our busy highways had not been unclogged before the onset of the anticipated seasonal rains; unplanned construction on waterways continued unabated, and little had been done to protect electricity sub-stations from the effects of severe flooding.

These were acts of negligence. Planners at City Hall are derelict in their duties when they allocate riparian land and waterways for the construction of buildings; they display laxity when they allow greedy developers and compliant contractors to redirect waterways exposing others to grave danger.

The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) is sloppy when it approves construction of unsuitable structures in areas whose ecosystem is under threat; relevant departments in the Nairobi County Government fail rate payers when they are unable to unclog drains or ensure sewers are in good working order. Those private firms licensed by the city council to dispose of rubbish put us at risk when they leave trash in prohibited areas. We the public, who carelessly litter our city, are not blameless in this matter and contribute to the filth that suffocates the environment.

We saw the consequence of this negligence — deaths, homelessness when hundreds were forced to vacate their flooded homes to seek refuge elsewhere; lost man hour in the congested roads. But the effects of this inundation could have been worse — the flooding occurred when an outbreak of cholera had been reported in some informal settlements in parts of Nairobi. It was a relief when new cases of cholera did not emerge.

But it is not just the occurrence of the flash floods that raised concern among city residents. The slow response of authorities to rescue stranded school children in one of the cases demonstrated the inability of our disaster response teams to act swiftly when the need arose.

The Sh50 million emergency relief tranche released by the Nairobi County Government came in too late after those who needed to be rescued had faced disruption. The government’s action to deploy 10,000 National Youth Service personnel, although commendable, came a little too late in the day.

The only institutions that seemed to rise to the occasion were the Kenya Red Cross Society and Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko’s group of volunteers who were able to rescue desperate victims from being swept away when all had seemed lost. Little was heard of the National Disaster Operations Centre, established by the then Ministry of Special Programmes under the Office of the President in 2009, or the Nairobi Fire Brigade.

Let these floods serve as a lesson to all of us. Let it serve as a lesson to city planners who issue building permits to developers keen to build in areas that should be protected; or NEMA whose approval of such structures makes it complicit to the suffering of Kenyans. Authorities should ensure land grabs in riparian areas and other parts of the city do not go unchecked, but perpetrators are held criminally liable. Tenants too can play a greater role in protecting themselves by ensuring that the buildings they occupy meet stringent safety standards. However, the biggest responsibility remains with the city planners – they owe it to Kenyans to ensure that tenants have been guided to live and work in a safe environment.