The Lake Naivasha Flood crisis intensifies as rising waters swallow homes and displace thousands, with officials warning of growing health and safety risks

According to local officials on Tuesday, the Lake Naivasha Flood crisis has reached a staggering new level as tourist boats that once carried visitors now ferry stranded families away from submerged homes.

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For more than a decade the lake has crept beyond its banks, yet residents of Kihoto say the scale this year is unlike anything they have witnessed.

Rose Alero, a long-time resident, said it has never happened with such force, describing the unfolding disaster as both shocking and exhausting.

Officials report that the Rift Valley lake has surged up to one and a half kilometres inland, an unprecedented intrusion that has left entire neighbourhoods unrecognisable.

Alero said people are suffering and explained that many neighbours are sick.

In her home, the water now reaches her waist and overflowing toilets have become a widespread hazard. She added that people are trapped with nowhere to go.

Hundreds of homes have vanished beneath the water. Churches stand in ruins and police stations sit underwater amid drifting vegetation.

During one sudden rush of water, children were forced to escape their school on improvised rafts, a moment that parents described as terrifying.

Joyce Cheche, head of disaster risk management for Nakuru County, said around seven thousand people have been displaced.

She added that wildlife has been pushed from its habitat and the expanding flood now threatens tourism, flower farms and other businesses.

The county has provided transport for affected families and introduced health measures, but no financial assistance has yet been offered.

Many workers in the flower industry are refusing to report for duty due to fears of cholera and landslides.

Cheche also warned that the growing presence of hippos close to residential areas poses a significant danger. She admitted that authorities did not see the disaster coming.

Along the lake’s edge, the skeletal trunks of once lush acacia trees lie submerged while the water continues to advance at roughly a metre each day.

Similar phenomena have been recorded across other Rift Valley lakes, displacing hundreds of thousands and altering local ecosystems.

Numerous studies attribute the rising water primarily to increased rainfall linked to climate change.

However, Kenyan geologist John Lagat of the Geothermal Development Corporation believes tectonic forces are the main driver.

He explained that these lakes sit along a major geological fault and that shifting plates have altered natural drainage systems over time.

When English settlers arrived in the late nineteenth century, Lake Naivasha was far larger than today.

By 1921 shifting tectonics had reduced it to a narrow basin only one kilometre wide.

Lagat said more recent tectonic movements have sealed underground outflows, trapping water and accelerating the current crisis, although he acknowledged that heavier rainfall and land degradation fuelled by population growth play a substantial role.

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Back in Kihoto, Alero said she remains deeply worried as she contemplates the coming rainy season. Standing in her flooded home, she said people simply cannot predict what will happen next.