Emergency workers in south-west Ethiopia scrambled on Thursday to rescue thousands marooned by the latest in a series of deadly flash floods across the nation feared to have killed nearly 900 people.
With 876 people in southern, eastern and northern Ethiopia already reported dead or missing from flooding in the past two weeks, officials warned that the toll was likely to climb higher with poor weather hampering relief operations.
Authorities in the devastated Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s state appealed for international aid as search-and-rescue teams fought to help residents of 14 villages submerged by raging waters from the Omo River.
At least 364 people were drowned and up to 20 000 stranded in the region when the river and several tributaries swelled by heavy seasonal rains in the Ethiopian highlands burst their banks on Sunday.
Unable to reach affected areas by air, rescue workers, including swimmers and divers, were using boats in frantic attempts to reach those marooned amid fears that water-borne diseases like cholera may soon pose additional threats.
”The search-and-rescue teams have spent the night on the waters looking for survivors and bodies,” said Tegaye Mununhe, chief police inspector for the Southern Omo region. ”The search will continue day and night.
”We are now dispatching more boats with food, medicine, tents and health workers to evaluate the situation in places we have managed to reach,” he told Agence France-Presse from Jinka, about 780km south-west of Addis Ababa.
”At the same time, we are dispatching another team who will help transport survivors we have already found to a higher ground,” Tegaye said.
Overwhelmed by the crisis, regional authorities desperately sought outside help as United Nations agencies and private aid organisations pledged to assist.
”We are trying to do everything we can but the magnitude of the disaster is not something we can tackle by ourselves,” governor Shiferaw Shegute said late on Wednesday.
His appeal came after officials reported the number of deaths from the Omo River floods had nearly doubled from the previous toll of 194, with the recovery of 170 more bodies and said they expected a sharp rise in that figure.
”We are expecting the death toll to increase and we are preparing ourselves for more bodies, maybe even hundreds more,” regional police spokesperson Daniel Gezhegn said.
The flooding in the south came after rivers burst their banks in the east, where 256 people were killed last week and about 250 are still missing, and in the north, where at least six people have died.
The country’s National Meteorological Agency warned this week that six areas in the north, west and south of the country will likely be affected by unusually heavy rains before the end of the month.
The rainy season lasts from June to September.
Ethiopia, home to about 70-million people, has suffered heavy floods and droughts in recent years, ruining agriculture that provides livelihood for majority in the Horn of Africa nation.
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.
Last year at least 200 people were killed and more than 260 000 displaced when heavy rains pounded the region. — Sapa-AFP