The water went down. The bills did not.

Letter from the table

To the Resilience Council,

On the night of 14 April 2026, heavy rain pushed water into the ground-floor room where I work in Nairobi. By morning, the water had receded enough to step inside. It had left mud on the floor, damaged equipment and made part of the room unusable. I have two employees. One could not work there while I cleaned and tried to make the space safe.

I am not naming my business or the people and institutions involved in the claim. What matters is the sequence, because it is the sequence that a small owner has to survive. I took photographs before moving anything, made a list of what was damaged, and kept receipts for cleaning materials and urgent repairs. I notified my insurer and asked what documents it needed. I also contacted my Nairobi City County ward office about the water and drainage problem. I did not expect the county office to pay my losses; I wanted the immediate local problem reported and the route for help made clear.

The first cost I could count was KSh 186,000: KSh 112,000 for damaged equipment, KSh 46,000 for repairs and cleaning, and KSh 28,000 in income I could not earn during the interruption. Those were not abstract figures. I still had rent and wages to cover. I used KSh 70,000 from household savings and borrowed KSh 80,000 from relatives to keep up with the most urgent expenses. I delayed replacing one item and worked around the damage. The cost of the flood was not just what the water touched; it was also the cost of being unable to wait for a decision.

I sent the insurer the claim information I had gathered and followed up when I was asked for additional material. I kept a written record of the dates and documents. I checked the complaint route rather than assuming that a claim would be resolved simply because I had reported it. I also watched for local response information, including notices from public and humanitarian channels. In the days after the rain,

those steps helped me understand where to ask. They did not provide the cash needed to reopen at once.

I want to be precise about the rules. The 30-day claims decision in the Reopen Standard is a proposal, not a deadline I am saying already applies to every insurance claim in Kenya. Nor did I have a confirmed disaster declaration for my particular loss that would have opened a bridge-funding route. That distinction matters. If bridge funding is tied to a declared disaster, the standard should make the trigger and the way owners can verify it clear. A person should not have to guess whether the event counts while bills continue to arrive.

The standard would change three practical things. First, a decision within 30 days would put a limit on the period in which an owner is left waiting without knowing whether to repair, replace or appeal. A decision is not the same as a guaranteed payout, and it should say what has been accepted, what has not, and why. Second, bridge funding within 10 days of a declared disaster could help a business meet immediate costs while its full claim is assessed. It should be simple to request, proportionate to a micro business, and clear about what evidence is needed. Third, continuity planning support should reach owners before a flood: where to keep records, how to protect essential equipment, and what contact route to use when normal operations stop.

Planning cannot keep every flood out. I had records, but I had not planned for how quickly a damaged workroom would become a cash-flow crisis. Support should not be a thick manual that assumes a dedicated office or a person free to complete forms. It should be short, usable on a phone, and include steps that an owner can take before storm season and during the first hours after damage.

UNDRR reports that small and medium-sized enterprises bear about 75 per cent of business disaster losses.¹ I do not need a global figure to know what happened in my room, but it helps explain why the recovery process should be designed for small firms rather than treating each owner as an exceptional case.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. UNDRR, Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices of small and medium-sized enterprises