Mozambique Floods 'Could Hit 250,000' for Second Time

Actionaid International Nigeria

ActionAid in rescue of 5000 Mozambicans cut off by flood

Up to 250,000 people who were hit by the February 2007 floods in Mozambique may be about to lose everything once more, the international development charity ActionAid has warned.

Yesterday (15 January) ActionAid worked with the government to rescue about 5,400 people who were cut off by the flood.

The lower Zambezi valley is being flooded by water released from the Cabora Bassa hydroelectric dam which supplies power for the whole of southern Mozambique. Local rainfall is adding to the flood.

Alberto Silva, director of ActionAid Mozambique, said: "There are 250,000 people living downstream of the dam. This is the second year they will lose everything"

The dam's operators have opened the gates to release surplus water and avoid the much greater disaster which would result if the dam burst. This year they tried to plan ahead to minimise flooding, but they were defeated by the early arrival of the rainy season and exceptionally heavy falls.

Silva explained: "This year the dam managers are handling the situation better than last year. They have been managing the flow since November, to give people more time to prepare. But once it begins to rain heavily this solution is not enough. The dam is filling fast and they have had to increase the flow rate to 7000 cubic metres a second."

Rising water is now threatening resettlement camps which many people believed were safe. Many people who left their homes in February 2007 are still living in the camps, and thousands more families are now arriving from the surrounding countryside.

ActionAid is working with the national government emergencies department (INGC) to move people from the flooded resettlement camps (Jardim, Samarucha and Chirembue) to Bawe.

"Resettlement areas which were safe up till now will be under water in a few days. People in the settlements will need to move to another area,"Silva said.

Early in December, ActionAid staff and local risk management committees began warning people and encouraging to them prepare for flooding and possible evacuation. Since 4 January, ActionAid has issued local committees at Bawe, Charre, Mandua and Chirembwe with emergency kits which include bicycles, megaphones, solar-powered radios, jerricans, lamps, flags and first-aid medicines. The kits were handed over at large meetings attended by up to 800 people.

ActionAid has provided plastic sheets to shelter 152 families in the Goli-Goli and Jardim resettlement centres, and distributed food and other supplies given by the World Food Programme and the Christian Council of Mozambique.