Killer floods wreak havoc as Kenya hosts UN climate change meet
Pastor Dale Morgan
Killer floods wreak havoc as Kenya hosts UN climate change meet*
NAIROBI, Nov 13 (AFP) Nov 13, 2006
At least 21 people have been killed and 60,000 displaced by massive
flooding in northern and coastal Kenya, triggered by three weeks of
unusually heavy seasonal rains, officials said Monday.
As downpours continue, officials warned of further devastation, while
delegates meet at a United Nations conference in Nairobi on climate
change that many blame for altering weather patterns and spawning deadly
drought-flood cycles.
"We have floods across the country and, since it is still raining, we
fear the situation will deteroriate," said Abdi Ahmed, the acting
disaster response chief at the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS).
In addition, the Kenyan health ministry on Sunday issued an alert for
possible outbreaks of water-borne diseases, notably cholera, in the
affected regions.
At the weekend, at least six people, including a schoolgirl, were swept
away and drowned by raging waters around the Indian Ocean port of
Mombasa and the northeastern town of Garissa, officials said. Two others
are missing.
The fatalities brought Kenya's flood death toll to 21 since October 25,
when the first damaging effects of the unusually heavy
October-to-December "short rains" season were reported by authorities.
Since then, at least 60,000 Kenyans -- 50,000 on the coast and 10,000 in
the northeast -- have been forced from their homes by flood waters that
have washed away crop fields, bridges and roads and destroyed numerous
buildings.
"All these people are directly affected or completely cut off and we
cannot access them," Ahmed told AFP.
On Saturday, the main road linking Mombasa, about 500 kilometers (300
miles) southeast of Nairobi, to Tanzania was cut off with four bridges
washed away, a local official said.
"Delivering food to the 50,000 people who are in need of urgent supplies
is the main problem," said Moffat Kangi, the commissioner of Kwale
district just south of Mombasa.
"We are looking for water, shelter and medicine for the affected people,
but in the long run we will be required to assist up to 200,000 people
here," he told AFP. "Any help we can get will be appreciated."
In the capital, municipal officials said flood waters had blocked the
city's drainage system, causing floods in some residential districts.
But the recent floods are not limited to Kenya, which is being hit as it
hosts 6,000 international delegates to the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) that ends this week.
The onset of rains has compounded problems across the Horn of Africa
region already brought by a recent killer drought with water unable to
be absorbed by parched soil inundating the worst-affected areas,
officials said.
In neighboring Somalia, floods have killed at least 42 and displaced
10,000 people over the past two weeks, compounding the misery affecting
millions in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
In neighboring Ethiopia, flooding from late October rains that burst the
banks of several river has killed at least 68 people and affected some
280,000 people, according to officials there.