Floodwaters claim 42 as Nairobi bears the brunt

At least 42 people have been killed by floods across the country,  Public Service, Human Capital Development and Special Programmes Cabinet Secretary Geoffrey Ruku has announced.

Ruku said the death toll rose after 17 additional deaths were reported yesterday morning. Of the total fatalities, Nairobi County has been the hardest hit with 27 deaths, including 21 adult men, three women and three boys.

The Eastern region recorded 10 deaths: six adult men and two women in Makueni County, and two boys in Kitui County. In the Rift Valley, three men and one woman died in Narok and Kajiado counties.

One more death was reported in Homa Bay County in the Nyanza region, where a boy was killed by the floods.

Search missions are still in progress by the police, assisted by Kenya Red Cross Society response teams, with the aim of ensuring that the bodies of all flood victims are retrieved and handed over to their families for burial,” Ruku said.

Nine people have been reported missing, including five from Nairobi, two from Narok, and two from Baringo and Makueni counties. “The emergency search and rescue operations are being carried out by the police and the Red Cross in the affected counties to try and recover them either alive or dead,” Ruku said.

The CS further said that about 207 people sustained various injuries, with the majority, 200, reported in Migori County. Nairobi recorded five injuries, while Taita Taveta, Narok and Samburu each reported one case.

So far, more than 50,000 people have been rendered homeless after floods destroyed houses or submerged homesteads. The government has pledged to resettle the affected families.

Flooding has also caused significant losses in livestock, with more than 607 animals reported dead in Tana River, Makueni, Migori and Nairobi counties.

With Nairobi among the hardest-hit areas, experts say the scale of loss and destruction could have been avoided through proper planning and preparedness.

Economic losses

Every time heavy rains fall, the city experiences a familiar pattern of flooding, destruction and economic losses as roads are submerged, homes inundated and businesses forced to close. In severe cases, lives are lost.

Urban planners note that much of the city’s drainage infrastructure was built decades ago and has struggled to keep up with rapid population growth and expanding concrete developments.

Rapid urbanisation has replaced open land and wetlands with concrete surfaces that prevent water from being absorbed into the soil. Instead, large volumes of water flow directly into drainage channels that are already overwhelmed.

Architects Alliance president Sylvia Kasanga said floods in Nairobi have become more destructive due to long-standing human and institutional failures.

She said that urban development is often approved without sufficient regard for hydrology, catchment behaviour or flood risk. “When these failures combine with intense rainfall, the result is predictable: roads become rivers, homes become traps, infrastructure fails and lives are lost,” she said.

“This disaster cannot be explained away as an act of nature alone. The rain may be natural, but the scale of death and destruction is not. It reflects accumulated neglect in planning, infrastructure provision, drainage design, maintenance, environmental protection and enforcement,” she added.

Kasanga also noted that drainage systems outside the city centre are poorly developed. In several neighbourhoods, drainage channels are clogged with plastic waste and silt, preventing water from flowing freely.

In Mathare, residents are still counting losses after their property was destroyed by floods. “We have not recorded any loss of life here, but most houses were flooded,” said MaxCollins Odhiambo, a leader of Mathare Social Justice.

Odhiambo said the drainage system in the area is outdated and cannot handle large volumes of water.

“The drainage and sewerage system was blocked by garbage and water flowed back into houses carrying both trash and raw sewage,” he said.

He said residents now fear disease outbreaks. “Two houses collapsed and many people have lost important documents, including academic certificates. Some children may not return to school because their books were destroyed,” he said.

People’s Liberation Party leader Martha Karua criticised authorities for failing to address the drainage crisis. “We cannot claim the Singapore aspiration while roads, drainage and flood management are treated as afterthoughts. An economy cannot grow on flooded foundations,” she said.

In a previous interview, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja said the city requires about Sh25 billion to implement a comprehensive drainage system. “People say we need to improve Nairobi’s drainage, but building infrastructure for rainfall that occurs perhaps once a year costs about Sh25 billion. We need significant funding upfront,” Sakaja said.

Human rights activist Boniface Mwangi also blamed poor planning and weak enforcement. “We have a stormwater drainage crisis because both county and national governments have allowed illegal construction in riparian areas, inadequate drainage systems, dumping of waste in drains and excessive paving that prevents the ground from absorbing rainwater,” he said.

Mwangi also claimed that illegal grabbing of forests and green spaces for property development has worsened the situation by reducing land available for water absorption.

He urged authorities to enforce regulations equally across all neighbourhoods. “When demolishing structures built on riparian land, it should not only affect informal settlements, such as Mukuru, Kibera and Mathare but also areas, such as Kilimani, South C and Lang’ata,” he said.

“Bad leadership costs lives. Leaders should be held accountable for the loss of lives and property caused by their failure to act,” he said.