By Sylvia Chebet
A loud and powerful roar tore through the sleepy village of Kamuchiri in Mai Mahiu in the dead of the night on Sunday as water from a dam gushed downhill, making a river where homesteads stood.
The deluge hit Mercy Wairimu's house, sweeping the family away in their sleep.
"I don't think they even woke up because the movement or the speed of the water was quite fast," George Mwaniki, a relative tells TRT Afrika.
The forceful current carrying with it debris including boulders and trees flattened every house on its path.
“I can just imagine the nightmare they went through; maybe wondering is this a dream, what's happening, what's going on?” Mwaniki ponders.
Neighbours jumped into the raging waters in darkness to save Wairimu's family and victims from several other houses that had also been destroyed.
Warimu who was in her 30's had four children. By dawn, it was clear that Wairimu and all but one of her children had died along with her brother.
Her elderly mother was lucky to be rescued from the violent waters and is reeling from injuries and trauma of the near death experience.
“The national reports are saying it’s around 40 people who died but the communities have already recovered around 70 people. so it's much worse than it's being, communicated,” Mwaniki, a climate change scientist who also hails from the affected region notes.
“This accident was totally preventable,” Mwaniki adds, noting: “There was a warning that came through but nothing was done.”
The dam, he says, had a failure about two weeks earlier, but the spillage was stopped by a railway.
“So if we had somebody who was paying attention, they would have known that the dam was risky and would have drained the dam, but that was not done,” he reckons.
“When the breakage happened it went and met the initial spillage on the railway and then the water was able to burrow under the railway and streamed all the way to Mai Mahiu and caused the destruction.”
The county government of Nakuru however says a blockage in an underpass or tunnel that channels water to a nearby river led to the bursting of the dam.
The climate change scientist is however not convinced based on his training in risk analysis and disaster preparedness.
“There are no accidents that happen. It's just the accumulation of very many small mistakes,” he states.
“I would actually call it a systemic challenge because even if we ignore science to make our decisions, we should have taken some action the first time the dam broke its banks, at least people should or the leadership should have decided to drain out the dam.”
The Mai Mahiu tragedy is an eerie reminder of another horrific dam that burst six years ago, also in Nakuru county not so far from Mai Mahiu.
Raging waters from the Solai dam swept an entire village downhill, killing nearly 50 people just after midnight.
Mwaniki is concerned that authorities and ordinary citizens alike, are yet to acknowledge the loud alarm that nature is sounding.
Environmental degradation continues unabated across the world. Around the Mai Mahiu area, there has been massive deforestation causing siltation of soils in rivers due to the heavy rains.
“It's purely a climate change issue. Normally we get around 300 millimeters (of rains) in the April-May rain seasons. So far, I think we have received more than 450 millimeters. So that is a 50% increase.”
A few months ago, Kenya and the entire horn of Africa region emerged from a devastating drought that lasted 3 years.
“The other reports I'm seeing or suggesting is next year, we might move back to the drought cycle,” Mwaniki says, emphasizing the need to mitigate against the vicious sequence of droughts and floods that is destroying lives and livelihoods.
While hosting the Africa Heads of Summit this week in Nairobi where 10,000 people have been displaced by floods, Kenya’s President William Ruto noted that the climate emergencies demand immediate and collective action.
“Today, we gather here, Kenya and the broader East Africa region faces severe flooding that devastated communities, destroyed infrastructure and disrupted our economies. Concurrently Southern Africa confronts intensifying drought affecting nations like Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Just last year, the roles were reversed, highlighting our shared vulnerability to extreme weather patterns,” Ruto stated.
According to scientists, this is just the beginnings of the labour pains unless action is taken to combat climate change.
“In the next couple of years, I would not be surprised if one day we have a year where we are getting 600 to 800 mm in April-May rain season. So if we don't start thinking now how to kind of address these challenges, things are just going to get worse than they are,” Mwaniki says.
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