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Mozambique: Rescue Phase Ends in Zambezi Valley
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
14 February 2008
Posted to the web 14 February 2008
Maputo
Mozambique's National Emergency Operational Centre (CENOE) has announced an end to the search and rescue operations in the flooded Zambezi valley, according to a report in Thursday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
The decision was taken at a meeting held in Caia, on the south bank of the Zambezi river, on Tuesday, on the grounds that everybody living in flood prone areas has already been taken to safety. The meeting said that the next step is concentrate on rebuilding the social fabric among the affected people who have been evacuated to resettlement areas.
But there are some concerns among Mozambique's cooperation partners who believe that there are still people in danger in vulnerable areas. However, the deputy director of the government's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), Joao Ribeiro, describes the people still in risky areas as "opportunists", who simply use the rescue boats for lifts to take them to their businesses of selling foodstuffs in the resettlement centres. They then return to the flood plain, pick up more supplies, and demand to be "rescued" again.
Commenting on the position of the cooperation partners, the commander of UNAPROC (National Civil Protection Unit), Leonardo Dimas, said that rescue operations cannot continue for months, and in the case of central Mozambique, operations along the main river valleys began on 20 December.
Dimas added that there are limits to compulsory evacuation. He did not think it practicable to remove people from dangerous areas by physical force. He was pleased that this year many people withdrew from the flood plain using their own means of transport, a sign that the awareness campaigns waged by local Risk Management Committees had paid off.
Nonetheless UNAPROC is still prepared to undertake localized operations, particularly is there is a sudden flood surge, arising, for example, from the opening of more floodgates on the Kariba dam, on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border. Dimas said that UNAPROC will evacuate Salia island in Chinde district, near the mouth of the Zambezi, because it had not yet proved possible to put the flood victims here into definitive resettlement areas.
So far the opening of one flood gate at Kariba has not had a significant impact on Mozambique. The gate was opened 50 per cent on Monday, adding an extra 750 cubic metres per second to the outflow of water from Kariba. Mozambique's Cahora Bassa lake still has a considerable capacity to absorb water from upstream, and the Cahora Bassa dam is keeping its discharges to 4,000 cubic metres a second.
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The level of the Zambezi in Mozambique is fluctuating. Thus, according to the latest figures from the National Water Board (DNA), at Tete city, the river fell from 5.02 to 4.89 metres between Tuesday and Wednesday, but further downstream, at Caia, it rose from 6.56 to 6.99 metres. (At both places, the flood alert level is five metres).
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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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