Heed the weatherman and prepare for rain

When heavy rains pounded a section of the city last Friday, it brought down a tree, cutting off Haile Selassie Avenue. Vehicles were submerged in water and others swept off.

Just after a few hours of rain, life in the country's capital city, Nairobi, which contributes more than half of the income to the country's economy, was at a standstill.

Drivers were holed up in major highways and streets for hours. Vehicles got stuck, some in eternal tangles that left no space to move forward or backwards.

As has now become routine every time it rains, lights went off, turning the lively city into a huge dark neighbourhood.

With all its strategic significance and as the centre of power in Kenya, it was embarrassing to see East Africa's largest economy helpless with what looked more like an overblown white froth blocking some highways.

A recent announcement by the Meteorological Department that such heavy rains will be witnessed for the remainder of the year, not just in Nairobi but in other parts of the country, cannot be good news for a country that still jokes about disaster preparedness.

Whereas rain should be a blessing, it has become a curse, mainly because of the way we respond to heavy rains. In the past, disaster response initiatives have tended to be ad hoc and uncoordinated.

The Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre (NDOC) that was established in 1998 after the El-Nino rains to deal with management and co-ordination of disaster response at a national level is non-existent.

Today, lack of preparedness remains one of Kenya's enduring development challenges.

Not long ago, heavy rains between the end of December 2009 and January 2010 caused massive flooding in Northern, Central and Western Kenya, displacing thousands of people and resulting into loss of lives and property.

The heavy rains expected come at a time when we still do not have an efficient early warning system and state-of-the-art capability for preventive action.

How we handle the ongoing and expected heavy rains, which the weatherman says could last up to December, will have a great impact on how future response strategies are executed.