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Mozambique: At Least Four Dead in Floods in Sofala
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
9 January 2008
Posted to the web 9 January 2008
Maputo
At least four people have died so far in the floods on the Pungue and Buzi rivers in the central Mozambican province of Sofala, according to a report in Wednesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
A preliminary estimate drawn up by the government's Disaster Management Coordinating Commission is that, since the crisis began in late December, 53,730 people have been displaced by these floods in the districts of Dondo, Nhamatanda and Buzi.
On Tuesday the Minister of State Administration, Lucas Chomera, whose ministry is in charge of disaster mitigation, flew over the Buzi and Pungue basins. On landing in Beira, he told reporters that the situation remained dramatic, despite a drop in the level of the two rivers. He feared that further rain upstream, notably in Zimbabwe, would lead to a deterioration in the coming days.
Chomera added that the government is prepared to respond to the flood emergency. 800 million meticais (about 33.6 million US dollars) are available for flood relief - 80 million from the Mozambican state budget, and the rest from foreign donors.
Further north, the flood on the Zambezi is worsening, and low lying parts of Tete city are inundated. The patios and kitchens of some restaurants beside the river bank are submerged.
"Things are going from bad to worse", Jose Martins, the proprietor of one of these restaurants said. "The waters are still rising, and if it doesn't stop raining in the next few days, those of us working beside the Zambezi will have to close our doors".
The mayor of Tete, Cesar de Carvalho, visited parts of the city at risk on Tuesday. "The water is reaching Tete city with great violence", he said. "We're working with the neighbourhood administrative structures, particularly for those areas on the banks of the river, so that can evacuate as soon as possible to avoid worse situations".
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The river at Tete rose from 5.5 metres on Monday to 5.83 metres on Tuesday morning. Flood alert level at Tete is five metres.
On the lower Zambezi, the situation appeared to have stabilized, with a slight drop in the level of the river at Caia (from 6.75 to 6.73 metres between Monday and Tuesday). This is still much higher than the Caia flood alert level of five metres, and within a couple of days the increased discharges from the Cahora Bassa dam are likely to leas to a significant worsening of the flood at Caia, and further dowmstream, at Marromeu.
On Friday Cahora Bassa was releasing 5,100 cubic metres of water per second into the Zambezi, but the waters entering Cahora Bassa lake from Zimbabwe and Zambia forced the dam management to increase discharges to 6,000 cubic metres a second on Sunday, and to 6,600 cubic metres a second on Monday.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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