NEARLY a hundred tourists are among people marooned after rivers overflowed in Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara wildlife reserve following a heavy downpour, a local administrator said Wednesday.
Torrential rains, amplified by the El Nino weather pattern, have lashed much of the East African country and destroyed roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
“Approximately 100 or more tourists” were stranded in more than a dozen lodges and camps, Narok West sub-county administrator Stephen Nakola told AFP.
“That is the preliminary number as of now because some of the camps are inaccessible,” he said.
The world-famous Maasai Mara, in southwestern Kenya, is a tourist magnet and home to native wildlife including the so-called Big Five — lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards and buffalo — as well as giraffes, hippos and cheetahs.
The Kenya Red Cross said it had rescued 61 people from the camps, more than half of them by air.
“In some camps, tents have been swept away and the Mara bridge, linking the Mara Triangle and the Greater Mara, has been washed away,” it said on X.
So far, 179 people have died in flood-related disasters across Kenya since March, according to government data.
In the worst single incident that killed nearly 50 villagers, a makeshift dam burst in the Rift Valley before dawn Monday, sending torrents of water and mud gushing down a hill and swallowing everything in its path.
The tragedy was the deadliest episode in the country since the start of the rainy season.
El Nino is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, leading to drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.
