Nairobi Floods Kill Dozens as Extreme Rains Expose the Cost of Rapid Growth

The rain began as an inconvenience.

On the evening of March 6, as office workers in Nairobi inched home through gridlocked traffic, a heavy downpour turned familiar bottlenecks into dark, slow-moving rivers. By midnight, in the low-lying informal settlements along the Nairobi, Mathare and Ngong rivers, it was no longer just rain. Water pushed under tin doors and through cracked walls, rose past ankles and knees, and, in some neighborhoods, climbed to chest height in a matter of minutes.

By dawn on March 7, police and rescue teams were recovering bodies from flooded streets, submerged shacks and stalled vehicles. At least 25 people were confirmed dead in the capital that day. Within a week, the nationwide toll from the floods had climbed past 60, and more than 50,000 people were homeless across at least 16 counties.

The disaster, concentrated in one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, is emerging as a grim case study in how extreme weather, rapid urbanization and longstanding infrastructure failures can turn a night of heavy rain into a mass-casualty event.

Forecasts warned of flash floods

Kenya’s meteorological agency had warned that such a storm was likely.

On Feb. 25, the Kenya Meteorological Department issued a heavy rainfall alert warning of downpours through early March and the risk of flash floods “especially in urban areas with poor drainage and in low-lying floodplains.” A seven-day forecast published March 3 flagged moderate to heavy rainfall between March 4 and 9, with peak downpours expected from March 4 to 7 and an “elevated risk of flooding.”

The warnings proved accurate. Weather stations across Nairobi recorded exceptional totals on March 6. At Wilson Airport, south of the city center, gauges captured 160 millimeters of rain in 24 hours—more than three times the threshold Kenya’s meteorologists classify as “very heavy.” Other stations at Moi Air Base, Kabete and Dagoretti registered between 112 and 145 millimeters, roughly a month’s worth of rain in a single day for that part of the March–May “long rains” season.

City drains and culverts, many already clogged with garbage and silt, quickly overflowed. The Nairobi, Mathare and Ngong rivers, which wind through densely populated neighborhoods, burst their banks in the early hours of March 7, sending muddy water into homes and across major roads.

Deaths, displacement and widespread damage

Police initially reported that many of the first victims in Nairobi drowned after being trapped in vehicles or makeshift houses. Others were electrocuted when power lines came down in the floodwaters. By March 8 and 9, Cabinet Secretary for Public Service, Human Capital Development and Special Programmes Geoffrey Ruku said the national death toll had risen to 42, including 26 people who died in Nairobi.

Ruku said fatalities were also reported in Makueni and Kitui in eastern Kenya, Narok and Kajiado in the Rift Valley, and in coastal and lakeside counties including Mombasa and Homa Bay. By March 12, the Interior Ministry said at least 50 people had died and nine were missing across 17 affected counties. An update the following day by international wire services, citing government officials, put the toll at 62. Later tallies compiled from official statements and media reports indicate at least 66 deaths.

More than 12,000 households were displaced nationwide, according to government figures, implying upwards of 50,000 people forced from their homes. About 3,500 households were affected in Nairobi alone, with families from riverside settlements sheltering in schools, churches and makeshift camps on higher ground.

Inequality on the floodplain

The geography of the damage mapped closely onto lines of income and opportunity.

Neighborhoods such as Mukuru, Kibra, Mathare, Huruma, Kariobangi, Pipeline, Githurai and Kahawa West—many of them informal settlements located along riverbanks or straddling drainage channels—reported some of the heaviest losses of life and property. Residents there typically live in crowded structures built from corrugated metal and timber, often on land without formal title and far from reliable public services.

“Poor people are bearing the brunt, people who cannot protect themselves from the waters,” Ahmed Idris, secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross Society, said in a televised interview after touring flood-hit areas. “You block the movement of water then water will build up and cause flooding upstream. We have built on waterways and blocked water channels.”

The floods did not spare wealthier areas. Photos and videos verified by local media showed stalled cars and waist-deep water in parts of Kilimani and Upper Hill, commercial hubs that have seen rapid high-rise construction. Still, residents there generally had sturdier homes and more resources to evacuate early or recover later.

Across the city, major roads became impassable. Commuters were stranded for eight to 10 hours on some routes as traffic backed up behind flooded underpasses and submerged junctions. The operator of the elevated Nairobi Expressway temporarily waived tolls to allow faster movement of emergency vehicles and motorists seeking higher ground.

At Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, access roads flooded and parts of the airfield were briefly waterlogged. Kenya Airways and other carriers canceled or diverted flights, sending some planes to Mombasa and leaving passengers stuck overnight.

Outside the capital, rivers overtopped in western and coastal counties. In Migori, along the border with Tanzania, at least 200 people were injured, many when homes collapsed in saturated soil. In Kisumu County, flooding along the Sondu-Miriu River affected hundreds of households. Authorities in Makueni and Kitui reported fields submerged weeks before harvest and the loss of more than 600 animals—cows, goats and sheep—in several regions.

Emergency response stretched

As the waters rose, the government activated a multiagency emergency team led by the Ministry of Interior and National Administration, with the Kenya Defence Forces, police and county disaster units deployed for search and rescue. Ruku said the state would cover the medical bills of injured flood victims treated at public hospitals.

The Kenya Red Cross deployed volunteers and rescue boats in Nairobi and other high-risk counties. Idris later acknowledged that the scale and speed of the Nairobi flooding “caught emergency responders off guard,” saying that impassable roads meant some teams took more than two hours to travel across the city.

Planning failures meet a changing climate

Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja, who took office in 2022, said the floods were the product of extraordinary rainfall acting on decades of unplanned growth.

“These are decades of issues of planning,” Sakaja told a local television station. “But I’m the one in charge now.”

He said the city’s drainage network “is not built for this capacity of rain” and estimated that Nairobi would need about 80 billion Kenyan shillings—roughly twice the county’s annual budget—to overhaul storm-water systems and reinforce riverbanks.

Sakaja has called for the removal of structures built on riparian land along the Nairobi, Mathare and Ngong rivers as part of a wider Nairobi River regeneration initiative. County disaster officials say natural rivers carry around 70% of the city’s storm-water runoff and must be restored and protected to function properly.

Urban planners and former environment officials argue that the problems are as much about governance as engineering. They point to years of weak enforcement of building codes, solid-waste mismanagement that leaves drains choked with plastic and silt, and regular amnesties for developments in sensitive areas.

Climate scientists say such vulnerabilities are increasingly dangerous as global warming alters rainfall patterns. A multi-country analysis of recent East African flood seasons found that climate change has roughly doubled the likelihood of extreme long-rains downpours in the region. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s climate center had forecast a strong chance of above-average rainfall for Kenya in the March–May 2026 season.

Kenya’s Ministry of Health, working with the World Health Organization and other partners, has launched a Long Rains Flood Contingency Plan focused on disease surveillance, emergency care and outbreak control. Officials warned that crowded, waterlogged settlements with damaged latrines and contaminated wells faced increased risks of cholera, typhoid and malaria in the weeks after the floods.

For thousands of families drying out salvaged mattresses on muddy verges or queuing for donated food, those risks are layered onto more immediate concerns: when schools being used as shelters will reopen, how to pay rent with destroyed stock or lost jobs, and whether they will be allowed to rebuild where they once lived.

After deadly nationwide floods in 2020 and 2024, Kenyan authorities also promised better drainage, stricter planning enforcement and safer housing for the urban poor. Many of those commitments remain partly fulfilled or still on paper.

As the March waters recede from Nairobi’s streets and river valleys, the city again confronts familiar questions: how to clear and upgrade flood-prone neighborhoods without deepening poverty, how to expand infrastructure to match its growth, and how to ensure that early warnings translate into protection for those most at risk before the next storm arrives.