GENEVA, November 6 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency on Friday called on donor countries for an extra US$2.8 million to help more
than 300,000 refugees in two locations in northern Kenya threatened by flooding."We have already begun to make engineering improvements in the two camps – Kakuma in north-western Kenya
and Dadaab in the east on the Somalia border," UNHCR spokesman, Andrej Mahecic, told journalists in Geneva, adding that much of the money would be used to pre-position essential items such as fuel,
blankets and plastic sheets, and to respond to possible outbreaks of disease.Mahecic said UNHCR feared that the looming El Niño phenomenon – a change in the atmosphere and ocean of
the tropical Pacific region that produces floods, droughts and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world – may now threaten the 338,000 mostly Somali refugees in the two camps,
which in any case usually are flooded for three months every year.When heavy rains started three weeks ago, UNHCR began digging trenches and placing sandbags around hospitals, boreholes and
other strategic locations in both camps. The agency has also been repairing culverts on seasonal riverbeds that connect different parts of the three camps at Dadaab. Without these measures, many
sections of these camps would have been inundated."We are also preparing to locate, to higher ground within the camps, refugees who might be worst affected by the floods, particularly the
chronically ill, disabled people, the elderly and children and teenagers on their own," Mahecic noted.In order to protect refugees in Kakuma, the camp harder hit by floods in the past, UNHCR
has diverted two seasonal rivers, the Tarach and Lodoket, that have often flooded lower grounds.The worst flooding in Kakuma was recorded in May 2003 when some 16,800 refugees saw their homes
destroyed. A number of latrines overflowed and collapsed, leading to the spread of water-bone diseases, including cholera and dysentery. The overcrowded Dadaab complex, home to more refugees than any
other site in the world, last experienced severe flooding in 2006.
Residents walk outside their damaged houses, next to a river, after heavy rains in the village of San Vicente near San Salvador November 8, 2009. Hurricane Ida roared into the Gulf ...
