Flooding has killed at least 44 people and forced thousands of others in Angola and Mozambique to flee their homes, officials in the Southern African nations said on Tuesday.
Most of the deaths occurred in and around Angola’s capital, Luanda, which was pelted by torrential rains last week. Twenty people died and 20 others were missing after a flood in Cacuaco, 10km north of Luanda, the state-run Angop news agency said.
Five others died in Tchicala-Tcholoanga, 45km outside Huambo in central Angola, after floodwaters washed away a bridge and swept away an estimated 70 houses, leaving about 350 people homeless, Angop said.
”Many bridges have collapsed and others may collapse at any minute. Many, many homes have been destroyed and others flooded,” Faustino Sebastiao, a spokesperson for Luanda’s firefighters, told Portuguese public radio RDP Africa.
In central Mozambique, five people died and about 3 500 others sought shelter after their homes were submerged, the daily newspaper Noticias reported on Tuesday.
Heavy rains swept through Quelimane, a coastal city in Mozambique’s Zambezia province, earlier this week, knocking down trees and submerging streets and homes, Paulo Zucula, director of the Mozambican relief agency INGC, told the paper.
”The situation has reached alarming proportions because the downpour reached 345mm in just one day … all suburbs in the city are under water,” according to Zucula. He said five emergency shelters had been set up in schools to accommodate displaced residents.
Angola and Mozambique are among a handful of African nations that have become more vulnerable to floods as a result of soil erosion and a lack of investment in drainage and other control measures.
Sewage and water systems in Angola and Mozambique fell into disrepair and ruin during the lengthy civil wars that raged in the former Portuguese colonies following their independence in 1975.
The worst of the flooding occurred in 2000 and 2001 when more than 700 people died in the central and southern regions of Mozambique, prompting the impoverished African nation to appeal for more international aid. – Reuters