Kenya’s western highlands reel after deadly landslides; at least 21 killed, dozens missing
Rescue crews in western Kenya battled mud, broken roads and fading light on Saturday after overnight landslides tore through villages in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, killing at least 21 people and destroying more than 1,000 homes. Officials said at least 25 survivors with serious injuries were airlifted to the regional hub of Eldoret, while the search continued for at least 30 people still unaccounted for.
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“Preparation to supply more food and non-food relief items to the victims is underway. Military and police choppers are on standby to transport the items,” Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen said in a post on X, adding that full-scale operations would resume at daybreak Sunday with the support of the army and police.
Rescue at daybreak
The heaviest damage was reported around Chesongoch, a hilly part of Elgeyo-Marakwet at the edge of the Rift Valley escarpment. There, torrents of rain loosened saturated earth, slumping entire hillsides and sending walls of mud through homesteads. The Kenyan Red Cross circulated aerial images showing brown scars stretching for long distances, with flash floods pooling where roads and riverbanks gave way.
“Access to some of the affected areas remains extremely difficult due to flooding and blocked routes,” the relief agency said, noting that teams were coordinating air evacuations for the critically injured. Helicopters ferried survivors and medical staff between village football pitches and the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, the region’s biggest trauma center.
‘A deafening sound’
Residents spoke of terror in the dark as hillsides shifted. Local farmer Stephen Kittony told Citizen Television he heard “a deafening sound,” grabbed his children and fled into the night as the earth gave way. Families ran in different directions, he said, trying to outrun the mud. By morning, neighbors were digging with shovels and bare hands, calling out names in the drizzle.
Throughout the Kerio Valley, the sound of helicopters mixed with church bells and radio updates. A pastor in nearby Chesoi led a prayer circle beneath a tin awning, a scene that has become familiar in a country where weather disasters increasingly test the resilience of rural communities.
A fragile landscape, a familiar risk
Chesongoch and its surrounding villages are no strangers to landslides. In 2010 and 2012, separate incidents killed dozens in this same belt of steep farms and seasonal streams. In 2020, raging floods washed away a shopping center here, erasing livelihoods in minutes. The landscape is beautiful and perilous: terraced maize fields cling to dramatic slopes, and footpaths wind along ridgelines that crumble after days of relentless rain.
This week’s landslides come in the heart of Kenya’s “short rains” season, which typically runs from October to December. Farmers count on these storms to replenish the soil and fill water tanks, but the rains have grown erratic and, at times, violent. Across East Africa, scientists have linked more frequent and intense downpours to a warmer Indian Ocean and amplified climate patterns. When the western Indian Ocean heats up more than the east—a pattern known as a positive Indian Ocean Dipole—moisture-laden winds can wring out dangerous volumes of rain over Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Infrastructure stretched thin
Saturday’s scenes underscored the country’s engineering challenge. Bridges that survived last season’s floods were again pounded by runoff. Rural tracks—lifelines for traders, teachers and health workers—morphed into rivers of clay. By afternoon, drone footage showed pickup trucks abandoned in waterlogged bends, a reminder that in emergencies the final stretch to the last homestead is often the most daunting.
Kenyan Red Cross volunteers moved with the practiced rhythm of a country that responds to crises as a community. Youth groups organized collection points in nearby Iten and Kapsowar. Nurses re-opened dispensaries on school grounds. In recent years, local responders have leaned into simple, lifesaving measures: pre-positioned first aid kits, rain gauges, WhatsApp alert groups, and the kind of neighbor-to-neighbor checks that beat official warnings by crucial minutes.
Numbers behind the headlines
Kenya has endured a bruising cycle of extremes. Only a year and a half ago, the long rains deluged parts of Nairobi and central Kenya, killing more than 200 people and displacing tens of thousands. Before that, a multi-year drought emptied reservoirs and forced pastoralists to walk extraordinary distances for pasture. The pendulum swing—from too little water to far too much—has strained public finances and family savings alike.
Experts have long urged tighter land-use rules in high-risk escarpments and riverine zones, coupled with hazard maps that guide where homes and schools can be safely built. In Elgeyo-Marakwet, such discussions go back years. But urban migration pressures, shrinking land plots and the simple fact of ancestral roots on ancestral land often complicate relocation plans. As one elder told me in a previous trip to this valley, “where the graves are is where we live.”
What to watch next
Officials said the priority through Sunday is search and rescue: tracking the missing, stabilizing slopes that could slip again, and moving the most vulnerable—children, older residents, and expectant mothers—out of danger. Relief supplies including tarpaulins, blankets, jerry cans and maize flour are being staged for helicopter drops while bulldozers clear blocked roads. Authorities urged motorists to avoid unnecessary travel in the escarpment until geotechnical teams assess weakened ground.
For families elsewhere in the Rift Valley and along the Aberdare and Mount Elgon belts, today’s tragedy is also a warning. If you live below a steep slope or beside a swollen stream, the telltale signs are often quiet: widening cracks in the soil, doors that suddenly stick, new springs forming on hillsides. The Kenyan Meteorological Department’s advisories, often shared by community radio and local administrators, can provide vital lead time.
A nation’s resilience on display
Kenya’s strength in calamity lies in its social fabric. It’s seen in the boda boda riders lining up to ferry patients, in the M-Pesa appeals that spread faster than rumor, and in the schoolteachers who take attendance not for class but to account for neighbors. The country has modernized its disaster playbook—satellite mapping, early warnings, joint command posts—but the decisive edge, time and again, comes from ordinary people who refuse to look away.
As dawn breaks over Chesongoch, that spirit is again on display. The questions for the days ahead are familiar to many communities on a warming planet: How do we rebuild on safer ground? How do we balance heritage and hazard? And what will it take to make sure the next night of hard rain does not end in a softly spoken roll call of names?
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
Members of the Kenyan Red Cross airlift survivors of a landslide in Murkutwa, Chesongoch village in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, western Kenya, November 1, 2025 [Kenya Red Cross/Handout via Reuters]
Heavy rains have triggered landslides in Kenya’s western Rift Valley region, killing at least 21 people and destroying more than 1,000 homes, according to officials.
Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for the Interior Kipchumba Murkomen, in a statement on X on Saturday, said at least 25 people with “serious injuries” have been airlifted from Elgeyo-Marakwet County to the city of Eldoret for medical attention, while at least 30 remain missing.
He said that rescue efforts would resume on Sunday, with help from the military and the police.
“Preparation to supply more food and non-food relief items to the victims is underway. Military and police choppers are on standby to transport the items,” he added.
The landslide occurred overnight in Elgeyo-Marakwet County’s hilly area of Chesongoch in western Kenya, which has been battered by heavy rains amid the country’s ongoing short rainy season.
Local Stephen Kittony told the Citizen Television station that he heard a deafening sound and, together with his children, rushed out of his house and ran in different directions.
The Kenyan Red Cross shared aerial images from the region that showed massive mudslides and flash flooding stretching over vast distances.
It said it was coordinating rescue efforts with the government, including air evacuations for the injured.
“Access to some of the affected areas remains extremely difficult due to flooding and blocked routes,” it said in a statement on X.
The hilly area of Chesongoch is prone to landslides, which left dozens of people dead in separate incidents in 2010 and 2012. A shopping centre was washed away in 2020 by raging floods.
