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Mozambique: Zambezi Falls At Tete, Rises Elsewhere
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
31 January 2008
Posted to the web 31 January 2008
Maputo
The rising waters of the Zambezi river in central Mozambique have cut off the small town of Magoe, near the Zimbabwean border, from the rest of the country, reports Thursday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
Further downstream, parts of Nhacolo, the capital of Tambara district, are under water - including the local airstrip and the police station. While the Zambezi invades Nhacolo from the north, exit from the town on the road south has become impossible, because the road has been swamped by the Muira triver, a Zambezi tributary. The Tambara locality of Sambadar is also cut off and now can only be reached by boat.
Wednesday brought some relief to the people of Tete city, since, according to the latest bulletin from the National Water Board (DNA), the Zambezi fell from the 7.56 metres measured the previous day to 7.27 metres. But many homes in low lying neighbourhoods of Tete remain inundated.
Further downstream, the Zambezi is still rising. At Mutarara the river rose from 6.11 metres to 6.2 metres on Wednesday, 1.2 metres above alert level. Mutarara, on the Malawian border, is the district worst hit by the floods. Since it is continuing to rain in Malawi, and 83 millimetres of rain fell in Mutarara itself on Wednesday, there is no respite in sight for this district.
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Over the same period the river rose from 7.3 to 7.38 metres at Caia and from 6.87 to 6.91 metres at Marromeu (the alert levels in these two districts are five and 4.75 metres respectively).
The Cahora Bassa dam continued to release water into the Zambezi at a rate of 5,900 cubic metres a second on Wednesday. But it may well have to increase these discharges since the water from Zambia and Zimbabwe was entering Cahora Bassa lake at the rate of 9,460 cubic metres a second.
The heavy rains have also inundated much of Mozambique's second largest city, Beira. Roads and drainage channels are under water, and the city's daily paper "Diario de Mocambique" reports that the rains have invaded many flimsy houses in poor Beira neighbourhoods.
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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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