Mai Mahiu - Eliud Njoroge and his wife
were inside their house in Kenya's Rift Valley when a crack
appeared in the cement floor and started spreading.
As they raced out they already knew it was more than a
construction fault. Other cracks had already started to appear
on their town's main road- a major thoroughfare to the Maasai
Mara nature reserve - after weeks of rain, floods and tremors.
In the days that followed, geologists started to take full
stock of the disaster - a giant fissure, kilometres long,
slicing through the road and surrounding countryside - a harsh
reminder that Kenya's majestic Rift Valley, a tourist hotspot,
sits on some of the most unstable ground on the continent.
"My wife screamed for the neighbours to come and help us
remove our belongings," Njoroge said, remembering when they
first noticed the crack in their home in the town of Mai Mahiu
on March 18.
In the days that followed, the house became so unstable it
had to be demolished. Njoroge was left searching for salvage in
the piled up bricks and corrugated tin sheets. The couple are
still looking for a place to stay.
The road was fixed in a day. But the fissure has forced
other families to leave and geologists have warned it could
spread further with more heavy rains expected over the next two
months.
"People on the ground should be sensitive especially when it
rains. Checking whether there are cracks, ground that is sinking
or tremors," said geologist David Adede.
"The cracks run almost in a straight line so you can
project. If you see a crack coming your way, get away,” he
added.
In the very long term - over the next tens of millions of
years - geologists say the underlying tectonic fault could split
the continent in two.
In the meantime, geologists have warned that authorities
need to do more to take fault lines into account as they plan
their new roads, rail lines and infrastructure projects.
"They constructed the road without knowing there was a fault
line, that's why the contractors are on standby since they don’t
know where the crack is going," said Adede.