Crisis teams move to tame season of death

• Emergency workers draw up evacuation plans and stockpile drugs ahead of floods

Emergency measures were under way on Monday in preparation for heavy rains forecast to hit many parts of the country in a matter of weeks.

In Budalang’i, which floods every rainy season, emergency services are preparing to evacuate families to higher ground and are stockpiling food, beddings and mosquito nets.

Residents of Kano plains in Nyanza and the Tana Delta area comprising Garissa and the larger Tana River District will also be moved away from the flood plains.

Parts of Murang’a and Nandi Hills, which are susceptible to landslides will see families evacuated away from hillsides.

Malaria deaths

A team from the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation is already spraying mosquito breeding grounds in parts of the country, especially Kisii, Trans Mara and western Kenya, where highland malaria kills many during the wet season.

Malaria drugs are also being stockpiled in hospitals, dispensaries and health centres in those areas.

The rain is expected to be a relief to the country, which has had drought for the past three years, but the attendant floods, disease and destruction are a cause for concern.

The Ministry of Water and Irrigation is distributing water tanks to communities in arid and semi-arid areas, where animals are dying and residents live on the verge of starvation, so as to harvest water once the rains come.

“Awareness campaigns are going on in Budalang’i. We are telling people what is going to happen when it rains as we relocate them to government facilities, on higher ground before the rains start,” Director of National Disaster Operations (NDO), retired Colonel Joseph King’ori told the Nation.

Camps are being set up in schools and health centres, he said.

The El Niño rains, Kenya Meteorological Department has warned, will fall throughout the country starting in the first week of October.

“They will go on in November, the climax of the short rains season, and proceed to December and January,” said a meteorologist from Kenya Meteorological Department, Mr Roger Ndichu.

Met boss Joseph Mukabana in a recent press statement said the coming rains would not be as heavy as in 1997/98, when El Niño storms destroyed infrastructure and many died in floods and mudslides, but added that there would be some destruction.

As a result, the Crisis Response Centre (CRC) has been holding meetings to formulate measures to save lives and reduce losses.