Kenya dam bursts: At least 41 killed as hundreds forced to flee devastating flooding

'The water has caused huge destruction of both life and property'

At least 41 people have been killed and hundreds more forced to flee after a dam burst in Kenya following weeks of heavy rain.

Water burst through the banks of the Patel dam in Solai, Nakuru county, 120 miles northwest of Nairobi, late on Wednesday, sweeping away hundreds of homes that border the reservoir.

At least 20 of the dead were children, police said.

“The water has caused huge destruction of both life and property,” Lee Kinyajui, governor of Nakuru, said in a statement. “The extent of the damage has yet to be ascertained.”

The Rongai police chief, Joseph Kioko, said there were “many people” missing. “It is a disaster,” he added.

Many are feared to be trapped after officials said water and mud spilled out of the reservoir and submerged homes, extending to a radius of more than a mile.

Almost an entire village was swept away by silt and water from the burst dam, said Gideon Kibunja, the county police chief in charge of criminal investigations.

Close to 40 people were rescued from the mud and taken to hospitals on Thursday morning in operations by Kenya Red Cross and Nakuru County disaster management teams.

The area has seven dams used by a commercial farm, said Keffa Mageni, an official with an advocacy group that helps to resettle displaced people. With the heavy seasonal rains the dams do not have an outlet, he said.

“There are two other dams which are leaking,” one resident, Stephen Nganga, said. He asked the government to investigate them for the residents’ safety.

The interior cabinet secretary, Fred Matiangi, visited the scene on Thursday and said the government had launched investigations to determine the stability of the six other dams.

More than 225,000 people in Kenya have been displaced from their homes since March, according to the government. Military helicopters and personnel in the past week have been deployed to rescue people marooned by the flooding.

The burst dam has again raised concerns about the state of Kenya’s infrastructure. The National Construction Authority in the past has blamed contractors of bypassing building codes to save on cost.

In April 2016 a residential building in the capital, Nairobi, collapsed during heavy rains, killing 52 people. Last May the wall of a hospital collapsed also due to rains, killing six people in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa.

Additional reporting by agencies