El Niño: The Warning worth not forgetting

El Niño It Is

Before deluge, warnings came, attention ignored and that is how lives are lost, properties carried away and infrastructure destroyed. 

Evidentiary El Nino is imminent as forecasted by the Kenya's weatherman with prediction rate going up to more than 80 percent with its adversarial effect to last until early next year of 2027.

River Nyando in Kisumu usually burst and paralyzes the transport sector and as well disrupting people's way of life, Nairobi city after every continuous heavy downpour usually gets flooded yet it is the face of the country.

Kisumu and Nairobi are one of the eighteen counties that have been labeled as high risk counties regardless of these, the county residents listen and watch El Nino information on media while the experts are in offices without any important communication to make.

Communication concerning forthcoming irregular rainfall patterns should not be done through sharing of posters, circulating memos. Worthy to note that rainfall havoc affects the entire country in different ways where lives of humans and livestock as well as wildlife is threatened, economic impact plummets and key infrastructural developments are affected.

The list shared by the Meteorological department has not only tagged two regions but also other regions for example the Coastal region, North Eastern, Western, North Rift and South Rift. Some of these areas are arid and semi arid which are intricately associated with water scarcity while the problems are not ubiquitously shared some of the areas suffer differently when hit by the same calamity yet warning alerts instream across the media to the public who are helpless and the only knowledge they have about El Nino or rather heavy rains is that farms should be tilled as that is the best way of utilizing excess rainfall availability.

Photo by: Don glen

Majority of Kenyans living in rural areas lack know-how of what to do apart from farming intensively while those in urbans man themselves by having a stock of heavy clothes and umbrellas perhaps that is the best summary of the adage To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Some people are in their capacity intelligently 'forearmed' by purchasing clothes to drive away cold and others engage in farming to drive away hunger resulting from the aftermath of El nino.

Leaders who should be at the forefront are straggling away from addressing the impending calamity and wades in the political dungeon. Which only serves their interest and gives nothing meaningful to the people.

It is high time for the respective policy makers, policy informers and relevant stakeholders in the weather department, environment and health to play their role to ensure that there is no repeat of previous mistakes because that is the essence of forecasting.