Charles Mwalimu, a lawyer and Mwingi North constituency aspirant survived being swept away by raging floods hours before the Enziu river tragedy that killed 33.
Mr Mwalimu said that on Friday night he was forced by circumstances to climb a tree to save his life from floods along Nguni-Kalwa road.
“I was driving back from Kalwa where River Thunguthu had prevented me from crossing to Kalwa. I decided to drive back to Mwingi and use an alternative route that avoids rivers.
About 2kms to the Mwingi-Garissa road my car was swept off the road by flash floods”, he recalls.
He likens the intensity of flooding waters to floating as a speedboat inside the bushes.
To save his life, he had to desperately look for any barrier he can hit in order to anchor his car.
Mwalimu considers the stoppage of his vehicle to be miraculous given he was prevented from drowning by a mua tree. A mua tree is one of the weakest trees in Ukambani. It is only used to make mwiko for cooking ugali but cannot withstand pressure to sustain any other structure.
On this day, Mwalimu’s car was stopped by mua tree. He remained there for more than an hour as strong waters hammered his car from all sides.
When the water levels subsided, he was able to jump off the tree and crawl into the mud and find his way back to the road.
STORY By MUSYOKA NGUI, EDITED By BONIFACE MWANIKI
MWINGI TIMES for timely and authoritative news.
No comments
Post a Comment