YVONNE'S TAKE: The drainage race

Nearly 50 Kenyans are dead. That is the number now confirmed after the torrential rains that swept across the country on the night of Friday, March 6.

In Nairobi alone, more than 20 people lost their lives as floodwaters surged through neighbourhoods from Mukuru to South B, sweeping away cars, flooding homes and trapping motorists overnight.

Thousands more have been displaced, and families are still searching for missing loved ones days later.

Yet what followed that night has been as telling as the floods themselves. Not the rain—the response.

By the time the country began absorbing the scale of the tragedy, many Kenyans were still sharing videos of submerged roads, stranded families and bodies being recovered from floodwaters.

The Kenya Meteorological Department had warned of heavy rains days earlier, forecasting intense downpours between March 3 and March 9 across several regions, including Nairobi. The warning was there. But preparedness was not.

And when the tragedy unfolded, the response from leadership seemed curiously detached from the magnitude of what had happened.

Condolence tweets appeared. Statements followed. Promises of relief food and multi-agency responses were issued.

But for families who lost their loved ones to fast-moving floodwaters, condolences arriving hours—even a day later—do little to answer the more urgent question: why did so many people die?

Because floods, even heavy ones, do not automatically become mass-casualty events—not in functioning cities and certainly not in Singapore..

Yes, the rain was intense. Meteorologists say more than a month’s rainfall fell within 24 hours. But rain alone does not kill dozens of people.

Cities fail people. Drainage systems fail people. Urban planning failures fail people. Approvals for construction in fragile or poorly planned areas fail people.

Nairobi’s flooding problem is not new. That much everyone agrees on. The governor himself said so on television—that Nairobi has always flooded.

If it has always flooded, why has it never been fixed? And what was done even in the last year to prevent tragedy?

The capital city has spent years expanding vertically, approving high-rise developments across neighbourhoods already struggling with basic infrastructure.

Drainage systems designed decades ago are now expected to handle vastly denser urban environments. Water has nowhere to go.

And when water has nowhere to go, it finds its own path—through homes, through streets and sometimes through people.

Families wading through waist-high water. Vehicles were submerged along major roads, bodies were recovered hours later from places like the city centre and even Uhuru Park.

In one of the most disturbing details, a body reportedly lay uncollected for hours into the following day—a haunting symbol of how unprepared the city was for the disaster unfolding in its streets.

And yet, in the aftermath, some leaders seemed more eager to defend policy positions than to confront the immediate tragedy.

There were explanations. There were justifications. There were even attempts to pivot quickly to long-term infrastructure proposals, including national funds that promise solutions years from now.

But long-term plans cannot answer the grief of a family burying a loved one today.

For them, the question is painfully simple: could this have been prevented?

Because when a city receives advance weather warnings, when drainage systems are known to be inadequate, and when flood-prone areas are documented year after year, the loss of dozens of lives begins to look less like a natural disaster and more like a governance failure.

Disasters test leadership—not only through technical responses such as rescue teams, evacuations and relief supplies, but through something much simpler and much more human: empathy.

The ability to recognise that behind every statistic is a family whose world has collapsed.

Nearly fifty lives lost is not just a headline. It is fifty unfinished stories.

And telling Kenyans that floods have “always happened” will offer little comfort to those still searching for loved ones days after the waters receded.

History may explain a problem. But it should never excuse it.