The death toll from weekend Ethiopia floods that devastated an eastern town rose to 250 on Thursday as rescue efforts entered a fourth day, making it the worst flooding disaster to date in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation, the government and police said.
With about 10 000 people still displaced, rescue officials said they recovered 26 more bodies overnight, pushing the previous day’s toll to 250, and that the intensive search is continuing downstream.
”We recovered 26 bodies overnight and now the death toll has reached 250,” Dire Dawa police Inspector Beniam Fikru said.
He added that the identification process is being hampered as many of the retrieved bodies are either mangled or already decomposed.
Officials said the search for about 300 missing villagers — whose chance of surviving is slim — was intensified on Thursday and extended 60km downstream as many families reported that they have not recovered the bodies of their relatives.
”Our intensive search still going on,” Beniam explained.
The meteorological department, meanwhile, said it is putting out alerts for heavy downpours in the country’s flood-prone areas to avoid a repeat disaster.
”With the support of the Ethiopian meteorology agency, we are alerting people, not only those in Dire Dawa, but all people living in the 19 flood-prone areas that the rain all over the country is increasing,” said Sisay Taddesse, an official from the Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Office.
The weekend floods that swept through Dire Dawa township about 500km east of the capital, Addis Ababa, has also left about 10 000 others homeless and crammed in schools and government halls, according to aid officials.
The federal government and humanitarian teams scrambled to deliver food and non-food items to the desperate civilians, whose livelihoods were wrecked by the deadly floods, Information Minister Berhan Hailu said by phone.
”The situation is now calm. The government is assisting people and … we are getting help from the public in terms of cash and labour,” he added. ”We are trying to study at the flood area and design a lasting solution that would prevent such flooding in future.”
The massive flooding was triggered after intense sudden rains pounded the Dire Dawa region in the Ethiopian lowlands late on Saturday, causing the Dire Dawa and Dechatu rivers to break their banks and sweep through the town and adjacent areas, where houses are often weak structures.
In addition, hundreds of livestock were swept away by the floods.
Federal authorities said they have deployed at least 300 soldiers to Dire Dawa to help clear debris and reinforce search-and-rescue teams, who scoured river beds and banks using heavy equipment and even garden tools in search of human remains.
Ethiopia, a nation of about 70-million people, has frequently been ravaged by natural calamities, notably famine-causing droughts.
In the past few years, flooding has affected large areas of eastern and southern Ethiopia, displacing tens of thousands of people and causing damage running into millions of dollars, particularly to agriculture.
Last year, at least 200 people were killed and more than 260 000 displaced when heavy rains pounded the region, flooding rivers that quickly attracted large numbers of crocodiles, forcing survivors to cling to trees to escape being eaten.
In neighbouring Kenya, flash floods have killed at least six people and displaced hundreds in the past three days, officials said. Hundreds of livestock have also been swept away. — Sapa-AFP