A video emerged of people wading through a flooded street by clinging onto a rope to escape waist-level floodwater in southeastern Kenya, Reuters reported.
The people had just been evacuated from a flooded bus and were crossing the street in the Kisauni district of the coastal city of Mombasa, Reuters reported, per the video.
Heavy rains and flash floods have submerged towns across Kenya and other East African countries following the start of the rainy season less than a month ago, Reuters reported. At least 46 people reportedly have died due to the flooding in Kenya.
“We elected leaders but we can’t see any help,” a man told Reuters, the video showed. Others reportedly blamed the government for not clearing blocked drains.
In Somalia, at least 29 people died and more than 300,000 were displaced due to the floods, Reuters separately reported. (RELATED: Watch Cop Heroically Save Motorist From Insane East Coast Flooding)
The adverse weather condition is caused by the El Nino and the Indian Ocean dipole, Reuters noted. The Indian Ocean dipole is a relatively less familiar climatic pattern, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stated. Unusually warm sea surface conditions in the western tropical Indian Ocean near East Africa contrast with the unusually cool conditions in the eastern Indian Ocean near Indonesia, triggering the positive phase of the dipole which then brings floods to East Africa and droughts and bushfires to East Asia and Australia, per the NOAA. In the negative phase of the dipole, the unusually warm and cool conditions and their effects reportedly switch locations.
Some 1.5 million people were forced to flee their homes across the East Africa subregion due to flooding back in late 2020, with some regions witnessing the heaviest rainfall in 100 years, the BBC reported.