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.

CRC was formed by Office of the Prime Minister to coordinate drought other emergency response. The operations of the CRC are overseen by the Special Programmes ministry.

Mr Ali Mohammed, the PS at that ministry is confident that enough preparations have been made to prevent a repeat of previous disasters.

“We are ready to give both food and non food items to people especially in Budalang’i who will be displaced by floods or landslides,” he said by telephone.

Emergency teams are already in Budalang’i and have identified schools and health centres where camps for the displaced will be set up. Cooking facilities, food and mosquito nets will be provided, he said.

Col King’ori said emergency workers were devising ways of helping people to move before the rains start.

“They will be issued with tents by the Kenya Red Cross Society,” he said.

The awareness campaigns are being carried out by officials from the Special Programmes ministry with the help of the Provincial Administration.

The emergency workers do not seem to have made the same elaborate preparations in other flood-prone areas —Kano plains and Tana Delta.

Col King’ori said in places such as Garissa and Tana River, where most of the communities are pastoralists, they were only being advised to move to safer areas.

In the Kano plains, he said people could move to safer ground without assistance.

Where there is danger of mudslides, such as in Murang’a and Nandi Hills, “we are telling the people to move to safer areas like going to live with their relatives,” he said.

The biggest dangers, especially in November when rains are expected to be heaviest, are diseases. The director of Public Health, Dr Shahnaz Shariff, said more than three million chlorine tablets to areas where cases of diarrhoea and cholera are expected, to purify water in health facilities.

Teams have been sent to 18 districts in the country where highland malaria becomes widespread during such rains to spray mosquito breeding grounds.

“We have also distributed enough malaria drugs in all the medical facilities around these areas,” he said.

Mr Mohammed, who has been chairing the emergency intervention meetings, said they alerted the Livestock ministry to watch out for outbreaks of Rift Valley fever.

“The ministry is now pre-positioning vaccines to forestall any-outbreak of the disease, which kills livestock,” he said.

The fever affects livestock during floods and was last reported in 2006 in Garissa and parts of Coast province.

During the last El Niño, billions of shillings was lost in damage to infrastructure. This time round, the Roads ministry said provincial and district road engineers have been instructed to clear drainages and open culverts.

They have also been asked to inspect box culverts and bridges to ensure they are not blocked by debris once the rains start. The Water and Energy ministries, which have been forced to ration electricity and water because of the drought, are viewing the El Niño rains as a piece of good fortune.

KenGen spokesman Mike Njeru said El Niño rains “are just what we need”.

The dams are all in a good condition, and they don’t foresee any problem, he added.

Food security is expected to improve and give Kenyans hope, as 10 million people face starvation.