Authorities in Angola, Zambia and Mozambique on Wednesday warned of a
humanitarian crisis after deadly floods submerged towns, devastated
crops and left thousands of villagers without shelter, food or water.
At least 55 people were killed and dozens others were missing in the
three southern African nations after heavy rains triggered floods this
week. The death toll was expected to rise as emergency crews searched
for bodies and cared for survivors.
"We're trying to come up with an emergency plan, to work out how to get
people out, supplying them with medicines and clean water," said a
government official in Luanda, Angola's capital and the area hardest hit
by the flooding.
"There has been a lot of damage done already and Luanda really isn't
prepared to deal with this kind of situation," the official said on
condition of anonymity.
While heavy rains are common at this time of year, the countries are
often ill-prepared to cope.
Decades of civil war in Angola and Mozambique in particular have
hampered the upkeep of infrastructure, leaving the drains and flood
controls in a poor state of repair.
More than 50 people died in and around Luanda -- mostly in the Cacuaco
municipality -- and some 1,200 families were displaced after their
houses were destroyed by torrents of water, Luanda police spokesman
Divaldo Julio Martins said.
"We believe that the number of reported deaths will rise," Martins said,
adding more rain was expected.
The scale of the flooding has led to fears of an outbreak of cholera or
other infectious diseases.
"We're calling on the health authorities to set up cholera treatment
centres in Luanda. They need to be prepared because the consequences
could be very serious," said Mark van Boekel, head of Medicins Sans
Frontieres Holland in Angola.
More rain will also complicate efforts to set up temporary camps for
those displaced in Cacuaco, where most of the homes are built on
unstable sand and earth.
Some 70 percent of Luanda's more than 4 million residents were believed
to be affected or at risk from the flooding.
Crops destroyed
In neighbouring Zambia, officials were scrambling to airlift relief
supplies to more than 20,000 people who had fled to higher ground after
floods in Zambezi and other towns in the northwest, near the border with
Angola.
The rising waters devastated cassava, maize, sorghum and millet crops
and destroyed bridges linking the towns.
"Crops have been destroyed due to the disastrous floods, and people
urgently need relief," Richard Salivaji, the permanent secretary of
North Western province, said in a news conference in the Zambian capital
Lusaka.
Salivaji said many of the displaced villagers had no food.
Authorities in Mozambique, which was devastated in 2000 and 2001 by
floods that killed more than 700 people, also reported that flooding had
wiped out crops and killed livestock in a number of towns.
Five people died and some 5,000 were forced to flee to emergency
shelters in the former Portuguese colony.
"Small rivers burst their banks and flooded our fields, sweeping away
everything including our goats and chickens," Armando Casimiro, a
resident of Moma in Nampula province, told Noticias, a daily newspaper
in Maputo.
"That was when we started to hear people screaming for help only to open
our doors to find out that many houses had disappeared and been replaced
by a lake," Casimiro said. (Additional reporting by Haggai Chilabi in
Lusaka and Charles Mangwiro in Maputo)
(Por Zoe Eisenstein,
Planet Ark, 26/01/2007)