At least 15 people have died in Kenya in floods caused by torrential rains that have ravaged East Africa, destroying roads, washing away dozens of homes and killing livestock, the Kenya Red Cross said on Monday.
“As of yesterday (Sunday), 15,264 households were affected, with 15 reported casualties and at least 1,067 livestock deaths,” the Kenya Red Cross wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Rainfall during the October-December rainy season in the Horn of Africa is being boosted this year by El Niño, a weather phenomenon generally associated with elevated temperatures, droughts in some parts of the world and heavy rainfall in others.
Floods have left around twenty dead and 12,000 displaced in the Somali region of eastern Ethiopia, the local government said on Saturday.
According to the UN humanitarian agency (Ocha), 14 people have died and nearly 114,000 have been displaced since the start of the rainy season in neighboring Somalia.
In Kenya, heavy rains particularly hit the particularly dry north.
Images circulated in local media showed torrents of water rushing through villages, causing residents to flee to higher ground.
Another video also showed a civilian helicopter rescuing passengers seeking shelter from the roof of a truck stuck in the water in Samburu county, about 300 kilometers north of the capital Nairobi.
The Kenya Meteorological Service warned last week that the heavy rains “will likely be accompanied by gusty winds” that could “tear off roofs, uproot trees and cause structural damage.”
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most affected by climate change, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense.
Since the end of 2020, Somalia and parts of Ethiopia and Kenya have been affected by the region’s worst drought in 40 years.
At the end of 2019, two months of incessant rains in several East African countries (Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda) left at least 265 people dead and tens of thousands more displaced.