Flooding highlights our poor level of disaster preparedness

While Governors and county executive officers were attending the 5th Annual Governor’s Conference in Kakamega last week, rains continued to pond most parts of the country with an unrelenting ferocity, wreaking more havoc.

Devolution Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa and Garissa Town MP Aden Duale flew by helicopter to Garissa to witness the damage caused to the town after River Tana broke its banks and flooded the town immediately after the closure of the governors’ conference in Kakamega.

In Kilifi, Lamu and Tana River counties, thousands of families have been marooned by raging flood water that has invaded their homes and farmlands. It took the belated intervention of the Army to evacuate thousands of stranded villagers to a safer place in Kilifi. The story of floods and the devastation they cause is the same in Eldama Ravine, Kisumu and West Pokot, where a number of deaths have been reported.

Kilungu village in Makueni County was the first to experience mudslides, but several people have been reported to have lost their lives after mudslides occurred in Murang'a County. The devastation is likely to continue, possibly into June, as the Meteorological Department warned that the heavy rains would continue. Indeed, there is little the Government can do about the rains, but the rains have demonstrated, once again, that our level of disaster preparedness is wanting.

With advance knowledge of the rains, and awareness of the probable risk areas in terms of mudslides and flooding, both levels of government would have taken precautionary measures to preclude most of the deaths. In Garissa, for instance, the flood waters took residents by surprise because it had stopped raining in the area a day or two earlier.

Monitoring water levels of River Tana would have seen the Government move people to safer ground, but that did not happen. In times of emergencies too, the necessity for stocking and airlifting relief food, clothing, tents and medication cannot be overemphasised, yet the complaint of the victims everywhere has been lack of these essential supplies.

In Garissa and Murang'a, some of the people interviewed complained of the spread of waterborne diseases and the lack of medicine or even health ministry personnel.

The Red Cross, as usual, was on hand to give assistance, but it can only do so much. More needs to be put into the area of disaster preparedness to mitigate some of the circumstances.