Flash Floods Kill Dozens in Kenya as Nairobi’s Riverbank Settlements Bear the Brunt

The rain began as an afternoon downpour on a Friday and did not let up.

By dawn on March 7, roads in Nairobi had turned into fast‑moving channels of brown water. Cars floated sideways along Mombasa Road and Uhuru Highway. Tin‑roofed homes in crowded settlements like Mukuru and Mathare had been torn open or swept from their foundations. Bodies were being pulled from swollen rivers in the capital and nearby counties.

Kenya’s Interior Ministry said that morning that at least 25 people had died in flash floods that swept through parts of the country overnight, most of them in Nairobi. “Twenty‑five people have been killed and property of unknown value destroyed after flash floods swept parts of the country last night,” the ministry said in a statement.

In the days that followed, the death toll climbed steadily as rescue workers and residents recovered more victims. By mid‑March, police and government officials said at least 66 people had died in flooding that began with the March 6–7 storm. A later government update put the nationwide toll at 88 dead and more than 34,000 people displaced as rivers burst their banks and flooding spread to western counties.

The March floods were among the deadliest in Kenya in recent years, but they were not a surprise. Kenya’s meteorological service had warned in late February that heavy rains were coming and would likely peak between March 4 and 7, with an elevated risk of flooding in urban centers including Nairobi. Regional climate forecasters had also predicted a high chance of above‑average rainfall across East Africa during the March–April–May long‑rains season.

“The rains came exactly as predicted. The infrastructure failed exactly as feared,” the online outlet The African Mirror wrote in a post‑flood analysis.

A month’s rain in a day

The storm that hit Nairobi delivered roughly a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours. One monitoring station in the city recorded about 112 millimeters of rainfall between 6 a.m. on March 6 and 6 a.m. on March 7, following several days of earlier showers that had already saturated the ground and filled drainage channels.

As the intensity rose on Friday evening, storm drains and culverts across the city quickly overflowed. The Nairobi River and its tributaries spilled their banks, pushing floodwaters into densely built neighborhoods.

The worst impacts were concentrated in low‑lying, informal or semi‑formal settlements that hug the city’s rivers and industrial drains: Mukuru kwa Reuben and other parts of Mukuru, Kibra (commonly known as Kibera), Mathare, Huruma, Viwandani and the crowded Pipeline area near the airport. Residents in Githurai and Kahawa West, on the city’s northern edge, reported torrents of water coursing through their compounds as nearby streams broke their banks.

In these neighborhoods, many homes are one‑room structures of corrugated metal or mud, built within a few meters of open sewers or heavily polluted streams. Paths double as drainage channels. When floodwaters came through, they carried away furniture, cooking stoves and bedding, along with people trying to escape.

Police in Nairobi said victims died by drowning, electrocution and building collapses. Nairobi County’s early breakdown of fatalities listed adult men, women and children among the dead. Some bodies were recovered from rivers in Starehe and Kamukunji subcounties, near the city center; others were found in Kibra and in settlements downstream of industrial zones.

“Some were drowned and others were electrocuted,” Nairobi police commander George Seda said as officers and soldiers continued search operations. He warned that the numbers could rise as more bodies were recovered.

Transport, airport disruptions and emergency response

Major roads in and around the capital were impassable for hours. Videos shared online showed buses and private cars submerged to their windshields along Mombasa Road and sections of Uhuru Highway, two of the city’s main arteries. Stranded motorists climbed onto vehicle roofs or waded through chest‑deep water, clutching bags and children.

The flooding disrupted operations at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, where Kenya Airways reported delays and some diversions to Mombasa. The government briefly waived tolls on Nairobi’s elevated expressway to allow drivers to escape gridlocked, flooded surface roads.

In an address on March 7, President William Ruto acknowledged the scale of the disaster.

“The ongoing flooding in parts of Nairobi and several other areas of our country has caused immense distress to many families, resulting in the tragic loss of lives, displacement of residents, and damage to homes, property, and livelihoods,” he said.

Ruto ordered the Interior Ministry to lead a multi‑agency emergency response. The government said it had activated national disaster mechanisms, deploying the Kenya Defence Forces, National Police Service, county governments, the Kenya Red Cross Society and state utilities.

Soldiers and police used boats and trucks to evacuate residents from flooded homes and rescue motorists from stranded vehicles. Temporary shelters were set up in schools and community halls to house displaced families, and officials said the government would cover hospital treatment for flood victims at public facilities. Relief agencies distributed food, blankets, mattresses and hygiene kits.

Why the same neighborhoods keep flooding

Despite the emergency mobilization, criticism soon focused on why so many people were still in harm’s way when the rains arrived, and why the same neighborhoods continue to suffer the worst each year.

Many of the areas inundated in March have flooded repeatedly in recent rainy seasons. Human rights organizations and urban experts have long warned that informal settlements along Nairobi’s rivers — including Kibra, Mathare and Mukuru — sit directly in floodplains and former wetlands, with little formal infrastructure and weak legal protections for residents.

Blocked drains and uncollected solid waste compound the risk. Heavy garbage clogs culverts and open sewers, preventing water from flowing even where drainage exists. In some cases, buildings — both informal shacks and permanent structures — have been erected in riparian reserves that are supposed to remain clear to channel water during storms.

Lawmakers themselves have acknowledged deeper problems. In a Senate debate on March 17, one motion described “systemic environmental governance failures” and noted that flash floods on March 6 alone “claimed a total of 42 lives nationally, with 26 fatalities recorded in Nairobi alone, displaced up to 50,000 residents across multiple areas.” The discussion pointed out that Kenya has experienced severe, often deadly flooding in 2023, 2024, 2025 and now 2026, despite considerable public spending.

Senators said roughly 35 billion Kenyan shillings had been allocated in recent years for flood control, water storage and other mitigation projects. Yet the same counties — and in Nairobi, the same riverbank settlements — keep flooding.

Climate change, urban vulnerability and what comes next

Experts say climate change is increasing the odds that extreme rainfall will test those weaknesses. A scientific assessment of the 2024 East Africa long‑rains season by the World Weather Attribution group found that human‑caused warming has made such heavy rainfall events about twice as likely and roughly 5% more intense than they would have been in a pre‑industrial climate.

The group also stressed that weather is only part of the story. How cities are built — where people live, what kind of housing they have, and how drainage and waste systems are designed — largely determines the human toll.

Nairobi offers a stark example. The March storm would have strained any urban system, but the heaviest casualties occurred where residents had few options: cramped homes in low‑lying settlements, limited access to formal land titles, little savings or insurance and restricted ability to move to safer ground without losing access to work.

The Interior Ministry said more than 12,000 households were displaced nationwide in the first week after the floods, spread across at least 17 counties. A later count put the number of people displaced at over 34,000, as continuing rains inundated parts of western Kenya and submerged bridges on major roads.

The flooding also affected schools and health services. Several schools in low‑lying neighborhoods were damaged or converted into temporary shelters, interrupting classes for thousands of students. Health centers in informal settlements reported damage to facilities and difficulties reaching patients, even as authorities warned of increased risks of cholera, typhoid and mosquito‑borne diseases such as malaria and dengue in crowded, damp environments.

International partners issued public messages of support. The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi conveyed condolences for the “over 40 people dead” and those left homeless, saying it stood ready to assist.

Inside Kenya, activists and community leaders have pressed for longer‑term solutions. Some are calling for clear plans to relocate the most at‑risk households away from riverbanks, with guarantees of adequate alternative housing and livelihood support. Others are pushing for stepped‑up enforcement against construction in riparian reserves and more investment in drainage and solid‑waste management before the next rainy season.

Nairobi’s technology community has launched small‑scale efforts of its own, including pilot projects to build real‑time flood‑monitoring dashboards and mapping tools to identify riparian zones and high‑risk areas using satellite data and community reports.

For families in Mukuru, Mathare and other settlements, those debates are taking place as they try to rebuild.

When the waters receded, many returned to homes that had been stripped of walls and belongings. Some stayed in makeshift camps or with relatives, unsure if they would be forced to move again when the next storm comes. Others patched together their structures and moved back, because the jobs and schools they rely on are nearby and there is nowhere else they can afford.

The long‑rains season in Kenya runs through May. Forecasters say more heavy downpours are likely in the weeks ahead. For a city that knew the flood risk and is now counting its dead, the question is whether the March disaster marks a turning point in how Nairobi manages its rivers and its most vulnerable residents — or another entry in a growing record of storms that repeat the same pattern of warnings, destruction and loss.