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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
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Anger mounts as Kenyans left homeless and searching for loved ones | |
swept away in floods | |
By Larry Madowo and Laura Paddison, CNN | |
Updated: | |
5:14 AM EDT, Mon May 6, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
When Julia Wanjiku put her son Isaac to bed after a day celebrating his | |
third birthday, she didn’t realize she was also saying goodbye. | |
In the early hours of the following morning, Wanjiku awoke after | |
hearing screams from her neighbors. A ferocious river of muddy water | |
had blown through a blocked tunnel and was sweeping into the town of | |
Mai Mahiu, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Kenya’s capital, | |
Nairobi. As the water hit, her partner tried to hold on to their son | |
but was overwhelmed — Isaac was swept away. | |
“We still don’t know where our son is,” Wanjiku told CNN, | |
recalling the morning of April 29. She was among the survivors | |
gathering at Ngeya Girls High School in Mai Mahiu on Tuesday last week. | |
Supported by her mother and her aunt, she wept as she said she was at | |
least grateful she survived. Isaac’s father was too devastated to | |
speak. | |
The flooding in Mai Mahui has claimed the lives of at least 52 people, | |
18 of whom were children. | |
It’s a tragedy echoed across swaths of Kenya, including Nairobi and | |
parts of the famous Maasai Mara wildlife reserve, after weeks of | |
intensely heavy rainfall triggered flash floods that have now killed at | |
least 228 people, left 72 others missing and displaced more than | |
212,000, according to statement Sunday from the office of the Kenyan | |
President William Ruto. | |
Despite the huge toll the floods have already taken, the worst may be | |
yet to come as rain keeps falling onto already saturated land and | |
swollen rivers. “Meteorological reports paint a dire picture,” Ruto | |
said on Friday. | |
Kenya is used to heavy rain at this time of year — its long rainy | |
season runs from March until May — but this has been on a scale not | |
seen for years. | |
Over just two days at the start of May, more than half a month’s rain | |
fell on parts of the country. | |
Satellite images from the county of Garissa show waters spreading well | |
beyond the banks of the swollen River Tana, turning land usually green | |
with vegetation into muddy brown swamps. | |
Experts say the rain has been intensified by a mix of two natural | |
weather patterns — and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, when warmer | |
waters are pushed west across the Indian Ocean — as well as the | |
underlying trend of human-caused global warming. | |
Life has been upturned for many. | |
On Thursday, Kenya’s interior cabinet secretary, Kithure Kindiki, | |
announced 178 dams and reservoirs “,” ordering people living near | |
them to leave their homes within 24 hours or risk being forcibly | |
removed. | |
More than 163,000 residents in Nairobi have now been evacuated, some | |
voluntarily and some forcefully, the government announced Sunday. | |
Schools, which have been closed during the flooding, will remain shut | |
“until further notice,” Ruto announced Friday. Some are being used | |
as shelters for those displaced. | |
People in informal settlements are particularly hard hit, said Mark | |
Laichena, chief strategy officer at Kenyan grassroots organization | |
Shining Hope for Communities, which works in urban slums. | |
“Their clean water has been contaminated, healthcare is scarce, and | |
their food supply has been washed away or spoiled,” he told CNN. | |
“These floods are on a scale of destruction that we haven’t seen in | |
recent years.” | |
From a multi-year drought to deadly floods | |
The government has set up more than 50 camps across the country to | |
provide shelter for those displaced and evacuated, and it plans to | |
increase this number, Mwaura said. It’s also distributing food and | |
other essential supplies. Foreign assistance is coming, too. The United | |
Arab Emirates is sending 80 tons of food aid. | |
But as the scale of the catastrophe widens, anger is growing over the | |
pace of the government’s response and a lack of information about | |
what happens to those forced to flee. | |
Human Rights Watch, a non-profit headquartered in New York, criticized | |
the government’s action in a on Thursday. | |
It said the government had “failed to put in place a timely national | |
response plan,” despite warnings from the Kenya Meteorological | |
Department as early as May 2023 that El Niño would intensify Kenya’s | |
rainy seasons. | |
“The unfolding devastation highlights the government’s obligation | |
to prepare for and promptly respond to the foreseeable impacts of | |
climate change and natural disasters,” said Nyagoah Tut Pur, Africa | |
researcher at Human Rights Watch. | |
As the world warms, while the overall volume of rain may fall in East | |
Africa, the events is expected to increase, as a warmer atmosphere can | |
hold more moisture, making dramatic floods more likely. | |
Heavy rains have also affected other East African countries including | |
Tanzania, where at least 155 people have died. | |
Mwaura pushed back strongly on criticisms of the government, saying it | |
was doing its best with the resources it had. “You can never be quite | |
fully prepared for these humanitarian crises,” he said. | |
He stressed the conversation should really be one about climate change, | |
and who is most responsible. “Western countries are wreaking havoc” | |
by warming the earth and African countries are paying the price, he | |
said, despite accounting for less than 4% of global levels of | |
planet-heating pollution. | |
Kenya, a country firmly on the frontlines of the climate crisis, has | |
swung from a devastating, multi-year drought — which scientists said | |
was by climate change — into deadly flooding. | |
“When people are still reeling from one extreme weather event, it | |
makes them highly vulnerable to another,” said Joyce Kimutai, a | |
researcher at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute. | |
This vulnerability is starkly clear in Mai Mahiu. The town is still | |
littered with remnants of the disaster: tangled heaps of furniture, | |
twisted sheets of metal ripped off the roofs of houses, SUVs flung | |
upside down and wedged into the ground. They are still trying to pull | |
bodies from the mud. | |
The people here are mostly subsistence farmers and market traders. | |
Many, like Githukuri Makau, a goat herder who is sheltering at Ngeya | |
Girls High School, escaped the flooding with nothing more than the | |
clothes they were wearing. | |
Makau said his house was flattened in the floods. He doesn’t know | |
what he’ll do when the school reopens and he needs to find a new | |
place to stay. “I’m now left destitute,” he said, “there’s | |
nowhere to go, there’s no one to turn to.” | |
Larry Madowo reported from Mai Mahui and Laura Paddison reported from | |
London. CNN’s Louis Mian, Niamh Kennedy, Allison Chinchar and Mary | |
Gilbert contributed to reporting. | |
This story has been updated. | |
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