Preparing for West Coast Rain and Flood Damage | First Onsite

Nearly one million people have been forced to flee their homes after floods devastated towns across western and central Africa, humanitarian agencies said.CreditCredit...Musa Ajit Borno/Associated Press
By Ruth Maclean and Ismail Alfa
Reporting from Dakar, Senegal, and Maiduguri, Nigeria
Sept. 15, 2024
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Aishatu Bunu, an elementary schoolteacher in Maiduguri, a city in Nigeria’s northeast, woke up at 5 a.m. to the sound of her neighbors shouting.

When she opened her front door, she was greeted by the sight of rising waters outside. “We saw — water is coming,” Ms. Bunu said.

In a panic, she and her three young children grabbed some clothes and her educational certificates and fled their home into waters that quickly became chest high, eventually finding temporary shelter at a gas station.

Ms. Bunu was speaking on Friday from the bed of a truck that she managed to board with her children after several days of sheltering at various sites across the flood-stricken city. The floodwaters inundated Maiduguri early last week after heavy rainfall caused a nearby dam to overflow.
Flooding caused by the rain has devastated cities and towns across west and central Africa in recent days, leaving more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Up to four million people have been affected by the floods and nearly one million forced to flee their homes, according to humanitarian agencies.

The exact number of deaths has been difficult to tally given the scale of the disaster, and the officially reported figures are not up-to-date. In Nigeria, the authorities said that at least 200 people had died, but that was before the floods hit Maiduguri, which has added at least 30 people to that toll. In Niger, more than 265 have been reported dead. In Chad, 487 people had lost their lives as of last week. In Mali, which is facing its worst floods since the 1960s, 55 died.

Rain is pouring hard and fast—more than eight inches in just an hour, turning river water brown with mud. Earthworms wiggle up to the ground as the soil becomes too wet for them. A flood might be coming.

A vehicle is left abandoned in floodwater on a highway after Hurricane Beryl swept through the area on July 8, 2024, in Houston, Texas. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Flooding is the most common and costly natural disaster in the U.S., and thanks to climate change, rising sea levels, wildfires, and changing precipitation patterns are increasing the number and intensity of extreme weather events with torrential rainfall. Already this year, there have been 39 flood-related deaths. Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are predicting “above-normal” hurricane activity this season, adding to the flooding risk.


Floodwater carries risks of injury, illness, and even death.

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By Morgan Coulson
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