Oral East Africa>Travelling through Kisumu, beware trailers falling from the sky At the hut of the story

Written by Ronald Otieno

On your way out of Kisumu town to Nairobi just past the main bus park, is one of the county’s most iconic landscape, the Kachock Nyamasaria flyover.

This piece of infrastructure however has a dark side, and has come to be known to the locals as ‘the Black spot’ for the frequency of trailers dropping down from the double decker road into the traffic below.

Nyamasaria fly over was one of the double decker roads in Kisumu that has come to define the landscape and the advance of the lakeside city along Kenya’s expanding infrastructure led spending.

For us residents it was something to be proud of in Kisumu county that truly did not just give smiles to the people around but also made work and transportation easier.

Much anticipated

Construction must have begun around 2013, I remember distinctly the way the construction took such a long time with intermittent presence of contractors who seemed to abandon site for long periods.

Boda boda riders could not wait for the road to be completed, they would steal a ride on it just to have a feeling on how it is going to be, yet it was still under construction.

This infrastructure is just a few meters from my former High school so I used to see it every day for a period of four years.

It would get busy at rush hours, especially on weekdays when local traffic joined Northern Corridor transit traffic for those crossing on of East Africa’s major highways.

First time unlucky

One fine Monday morning as I was dashing to School, I saw a crowded group of people with ‘Tuktuks’ and motorbikes parked along the road side, due to curiosity I decided have a look.

It wasn’t something any human would want to check twice.

A sugarcane transport trailer had lost control, rolled from the double decker road landing down on a ‘tuktuk’ down on the road below that had been carrying unsuspecting passengers headed to town.

It was a bad accident where many lives were lost including the trailer driver and everyone in the ‘Tuktuk’.

Since then the road has turned into an almost predictable cycle of similar bizarre accidents that has led locals to conclude, an engineering flaw may be responsible for the frequent accidents.

A black spot

On a Wednesday, April 08 2021 a similarly bizarre accident around the spot claimed three lives.

Same place, same spot, same type of vehicle, only this the sugar transporting trailer lost control and veered off the flyover to land twenty meters down into two saloon cars that were parked along that road which is a small carwash that has been there for around a decade.

This one caught the attention of local people, it went viral over the internet and dominated airwaves as the trend began becoming apparent.

It led to Kisumu Governor Anyang Nyongo’ issuing out a request to the traffic police department to urgently investigate why the flyover of Nairobi – Kisumu highway has turned out to be such a blackspot.

Tuesday, May 16,2023 a huge lorry with massive tones plunged off the flyover and landed on a ‘Tuktuk’ claiming three lives. This time it caught the attention of not only the countygovernment and the residents but the national media groups covered it as the place known for its occurrences of the repeat accidents.

Authorities ignore problem

Sadly over the years not much has been done and this year again, on Thursday, June 13, 2024 a Sugarcane trailer once again lost control at the same spot.

Only this time it only nearly fell out of the road. Luckily enough it was held back by the barriers. Unfortunately, what the residents took from the incident was the rush for free sugar canes that fell from above.

However, likelihood of a trailer falling on top of another car as you drive through Kisumu is almost certain. Residents say the engineers need to fix the curve of the bend to allow huge transit trailers negotiate the fly over. The say interviews with all the drivers who have had incidents on the road always blamed loss of control due to the sharp bends with its low pavements.

They said accidents do happen frequently only those that have claimed lives are the ones that are being given attention to.

Governor Nyong’o said measures need to be taken even if it means banning Vehicles weighing over 10 tones from using the flyover.