At Least 44 Killed, 40 Missing as Dam Bursts in Kenya

Villagers said it started with a loud rumble, then houses collapsed one by one under an approaching wall of water.

“We took our children and rushed to higher ground,” farmer Joseph Maina told The Associated Press. Their home was submerged and their crops were washed away but unlike dozens of others, they survived.

At least 44 were dead and another 40 were missing Thursday after a dam swollen by weeks of seasonal rains burst in Kenya’s Rift Valley, sweeping away hundreds of homes and sending people fleeing, officials said.

At least 20 of the dead were children.

“Many people are missing. It is a disaster,” said Rongai town police chief Joseph Kioko.

The bursting of the Patel Dam in Solai, Nakuru County, on Wednesday night was the deadliest single incident yet in the seasonal rains that have killed more than 170 people in Kenya since March. The floods hit as the East African nation was recovering from a severe drought that affected half of the country.

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. Officials said homes over a radius of nearly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) were submerged.

Forty people have been reported missing, Regional Commissioner Mwongo Chimwanga said, while about 40 others were rescued from the mud and taken to local hospitals.

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…