Floods Displace Thousands In Mozambique And Angola
Date: 12-Mar-10
Country: AFRICA
Author: Henrique Almeida
LUANDA/MAPUTO - Flooding in Mozambique and Angola has displaced thousands of families, prompting both governments to step up rescue operations and Mozambican authorities to issue a red alert for some areas.
Torrential rain that has swept central Mozambique and southern Angola for weeks has caused some rivers to overflow into villages along their paths and many villagers have fled to higher ground.
Mozambique's government issued a red alert late on Tuesday, one step down from declaring a disaster area, and said it would forcibly evacuate about 130,000 people in areas at risk in the centre of the country.
A government spokesman said flooding was expected to continue along the Zambezi, Africa's fourth biggest river. The floodgates of the river's Cahora Bassa dam have been opened to ease the pressure on its walls and this was also expected to increase the floods.
The poverty-stricken African country said it did not plan to ask for international aid for time being.
"All the conditions have been created to evacuate and relocate 130,000 people living in areas of risk," government spokesman Alberto Nkutumula was quoted as saying by Portuguese news agency Lusa.
"There is internal capacity to deal with the situation."
In Angola, like Mozambique a former Portuguese colony, 10,000 people have lost their homes to floods in the southern province of Cunene, according to the state-owned news agency Angop.
Mozambicans and Angolans are often victims of flooding during the rainy season. In 2000 and 2001, floods in Mozambique killed 700 people and drove half a million from their homes. Last year 20 people died in floods in southern Angola.
Both countries have minimised the loss of life by evacuating people to higher ground at the start of the rainy season. This year, two people were swept to their deaths by the floodwaters in Mozambique.
An official with Mozambique's National Disaster Management Institute (INGC) said the evacuation of thousands of people living along the banks of the Zambezi and other flood-prone rivers would avoid more deaths.
"All the people that were victims of floods in previous years are being moved," Luis Pacheco, the INGC official in the central province of Sofala, told the newspaper O Pais.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
