A mother and her two year child drowned Sunday at Kamunyolo village in Makueni Sub County when raging waters swept off their house following heavy rains pounding the area.
Husband to the deceased survived by climbing a tree and clinging onto it until he was rescued 5 hours later and rushed to Makueni Referral Hospital for treatment.
The 4a.m incident occurred after Kamunyolo and Nyunzu dams burst banks and the raging waters washed away houses belonging to some six families in Makueni Sub County.
Area OCPD, Bosita Omukolongolo confirming the incident, identified the deceased as Frascisca Waema (20) and Junepeter Musyoka (2).
“The bodies were retrieved one kilometre from the scene of the incident. I urge residents to move to higher grounds especially during this rainy season to avoid such loss of lives,” he said, while addressing the media in his Wote office Sunday.
The bodies were taken to Makueni Referral Hospital mortuary for preservation awaiting post-mortem.
The rains that caused this havoc started on Saturday at 4pm and went on until 7a.m Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, pit latrines have sunk in some residential houses in the county forcing some tenants to move out from the affected premises.
At the same time, traffic was paralyzed for two hours along the busy Mombasa-Nairobi highway after culverts at Sultan Hamud became blocked and caused flooding waters to spill over the road.
“We closed the road temporarily for two hours to allow waters to subside. This caused traffic jam running 5 kilometres from Nairobi side and 3 kilometres from the Mombasa side,” said the Makueni County Police Commander, Joseph Ole Naipeyan on phone.
According to police, the raging waters apparently came from neighbouring Kajiado County.
By Patrick Nyakundi
