5 January 2008
Maputo — The flood waters of the Pungue river on Friday surged across the main road from the central Mozambican port of Beira to Zimbabwe.
The road was cut in five separate places between Mutua and Tica in the districts of Dondo and Nhamatanda. As a result, using this stretch of the road is hazardous, and queues of vehicles built up on either side of the flooded areas, notably trucks carrying goods to or from the landlocked countries of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.
On Friday morning, the Pungue at the Mafambisse sugar plantation was measured at 8.25 metres, massively above the flood alert level of six metres. The situation could easily worsen if it continues raining in Zimbabwe, and further water is funneled into the Pungue valley.
Cited in Saturday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", Paulo Zucula, director of Mozambique's relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC), said that, if the authorities do ban vehicles from attempting to use the flooded stretch, then, just as happened during the last significant Pungue flood, six years ago, trains can be used to carry vehicles and bypass the flooded area, (The Beira-Zimbabwe railway is not under threat from the flood).
On Friday, according to the statistics from the National Water Board (DNA), the Zambezi river at Tete city was measured at 5.25 metres, going above the flood alert level of five metres for the first time this rainy season. This means that from Tete all the way to the river's mouth, some 500 kilometres to the east, the Zambezi is in flood. This is a repetition of last year's scenario on the Zambezi - with the significant difference that major flooding has happened a couple of weeks earlier than in 2007.
At Caia, on the lower Zambezi, the river was 6.72 metres high on Friday and still rising - flood alert level at Caia is five metres.
On the north bank of the river, in Zambezia province, 10,000 people remain at risk in the flood-prone areas of Chinde district. They are refusing to move, despite appeals from the provincial government to learn from the past, and avoid risking their lives.
The DNA reports continued heavy inflows of water into the Cahora Bassa lake from Zambia and Zimbabwe. Despite this, the management of the Cahora Bassa dam has not increased its discharges into the Zambezi, which have remained steady at 5,100 cubic metres a second.
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