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Mozambique: Zambezi Flood Isolates Marromeu
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
6 February 2008
Posted to the web 6 February 2008
Maputo
The flood on the Zambezi river has now isolated the town of Marromeu, in the central province of Sofala, from the rest of the country, reports Tuesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
On Monday morning, the Zambezi at Marromeu reached a height of 7.44 metres, almost three metres above the alert level of 4.75 metres.
The Marromeu district administrator, Joao Chavica, told the paper "We're in a critical situation, with families carrying baggage on their heads from one place to another, looking for safety. In fact, we're penned in here".
With the roads cut, Chavica said that Marromeu town can only contact other parts of the district, such as the Malingapansi administrative post, by telephone.
There is now a serious shortage of fuel for search and rescue operations in the Zambezi valley. Last week a large boat on loan from the Sena Sugar company ran out of fuel. Attempts by the government's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), to obtain more fuel from Beira or Quelimane ran into difficulties because Monday was a public holiday.
Despite these problems, the director of the INGC, Paulo Zucula, is insisting that the rescue operations in the Zambezi valley must end by 11 February.
The INGC is now bracing itself for the impact of a possible flood surge from the Kariba dam, on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border. The Zimbabwe River Authority (ZRA), which runs the dam, has announced that it will open one of the floodgates, thus greatly increasing the amount of water that Kariba will release into the Zambezi.
The ZRA is supposed to give Mozambique at least seven days notice before opening the floodgates. Since the first statement from the ZRA on the matter was issued on 31 January, it can be expected that the floodgate will be opened by Thursday.
A further statement from the ZRA, cited by the Reuters news agency on Monday declared that the floodgates 'may be opened at any time if the need arises'.
The floodgates on a second Zambian dam, the Itezhi-Tezhi, may also be opened. This dam is on the Kafue river, which joins the Zambezi between Kariba and the Mozambican border.
The water released by the Kariba and Itezhi-Tezhi dams will flow into Cahora Bassa lake, and may well force the Cahora Bassa dam to increase the discharges from its floodgates.
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According to the National Water Board (DNA), over the weekend Cahora Bassa did the opposite, reducing its discharges from 5,900 to 4,800, and then to around 3,000 cubic metres a second. Water was continuing to enter the lake at a rate of more than 10,000 cubic metres a second. The dam management thus decided to store most of this incoming water in the lake, which may provide the lower Zambezi with something of a respite.
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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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