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Mozambique: Further Relief Operations As Zambezi Rises
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
2 February 2008
Posted to the web 2 February 2008
Maputo
Mozambique's National Emergency Operational Centre (CENOE) on Friday launched an operation named "Active Reconnaissance" to assist people cut off by the flood waters of the Zambezi river in Manica and Tete provinces.
According to a report in Saturday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", the rescue mission is concentrating on the areas of Sambadar, Licumba, Fefe and Inhangoma, where thousands of people are believed to be at risk. The situation here deteriorated over the past week, as the Zambezi continued to rise, and the waters reached areas previously believed to be safe.
Inhangoma is an area of particular concern. This is the part of Tete's Mutarara district that is at the confluence of the Zambezi and the Shire rivers. A week ago, despite all the warnings given by the authorities, Inhangoma residents began leaving the government resettlement areas and returning to their homes nearer the rivers. At that time the waters were falling, and it was fondly imagined that the worst of the flooding was over.
But over the past few days, the Zambezi has risen again, and the flood in Inhangoma is now worse than the disasters, not only of last year, but also of 2001.
CENOE has sent two boats from Caia, the headquarters of the relief operation, upstream to Inhangoma, on the north bank of the river, and to the Manica district of Tambara on the south bank.
As the waters rise, so more roads are cut. The road from the Malawian border to the Mutarara district capital, Nhamayabue, is no longer passable, and this has cut Nhamayabue off from the rest of the country.
On the south bank of the river, the road from Caia to the small town of Sena has been cut, and continued heavy rains are threatening to cut all roads to the town of Maringue.
"We're ever more isolated here in the district capital", the Mutarara administrator, Alexandre Faite, told reporters. "Up until Tuesday, we could reach Tete city via Malawi, but that road is no longer passable, because the waters of the Zambezi and the shire have cut it in the Bawe area".
The Zambezi had inundated low-lying parts of Nhamayabue itself, "so we already have displaced people in the district capital", said Faite. "We have neighbourhoods under water, and it's the same in Mutarara-Velha, where there are houses and roads under water. All the maize and sorghum sown in this agricultural campaign has been lost".
One of the two cargo helicopters that had broken down in the Zambezi Valley was repaired on Friday, and was able to fly food aid to a resettlement area in Sambadar, in Tambara.
Currently, relief workers are trying to supply all the resettlement areas and transit camps with enough food to last for between five and ten days. After that a system of monthly rations of maize flour, beans, vegetable oil and salt will be established.
The Friday bulletin from the National Water Board (DNA) shows that the Zambezi at Tete city is now falling. It was measured at 6.96 metres on Friday morning. But that is still almost two metres above flood alert level, and many homes in low-lying Tete neighbourhoods remain inundated.
Further downstream the river continues to rise. At Mutarara it rose from 6.63 to 7.17 metres. Mutarara suffers much more than Tete, because a major tributary of the Zambezi, the Revobue, joins the river below Tete - and the Revobue is now massively in flood. The alert level for the Revobue is four metres, but it was measured at 5.78 metres on Friday.
At Caia the river rose to 7.54 metres, and at Marromeu to seven metres (alert level at these two points is five metres and 4.75 metres respectively).
Discharges from the Cahora Bassa dam have remained steady at 5,900 cubic metres a second - but the amount of water entering the dam lake has risen to 10.364 cubic metres a second. Should Cahora Bassa be forced to increase its discharges, the flooding on the lower Zambezi could become much worse.
There has also been a rapid rise in the level of the Limpopo river, in the southern province of Gaza. At its upper reaches, at Combumune, the Limpopo is above the alert level of 4.5 metres. It was measured at 5.36 metres on Friday.
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At Chokwe, home to Mozambique's largest irrigation scheme, the river rose from 2.22 metres on Wednesday, to 3.54 metres on Thursday and 4.24 metres on Friday. This is still below the alert level, thanks largely to the role played by the Massingir dam in holding back a rush of water from South African, down the Elephants River, the largest tributary of the Limpopo.
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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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