NORTH EAST AFRICA: Floods Leave A Trail Of Chaos

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Nov 8 1997 (IPS) - Record rainfalls and floods hitting the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are leaving behind a trail of tears and destruction.

The latest to be hit is Ethiopia, where 57 people have been killed and 4,000 made homeless, the state-run Radio Ethiopia reported on Monday.

“Over 9,000 head of livestock in the Ogaden region, on the border with Somalia, have also been washed away by flooding, caused by rising rivers,” Radio Ethiopia said.

Similar flooding has washed away homes and roads and displacing thousands of farmers along the Juba River Valley, Somalia’s farming breadbasket,

Aid workers in southern Somalia, where Juba River valley is situated, say the mid-October rains caused the river to burst its banks and flood the area.

In Sudan, similar heavy rains, which began on Oct. 23, have left at least five people dead and hundreds of houses destroyed at Port Sudan, along the Red Sea.

The rainfall, which measured 120 milimetres, the highest for nearly 50 years, washed away bridges linking Port Sudan and Toker towns to the hinterland, severing the coastal area from the rest of the country. To tackle the scourge, the state of emergency was declared in the area.

Three weeks ago, President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya also declared his country’s affected coastal zone a disaster area and established a disaster fund for flood victims.

He also announced a major relief and rehabilitation exercise to be co-ordinated by the armed forces and the local authorities in the coastal province, to alleviate the food shortage and rebuild the damaged infrastructure.

Like elsewhere in the region, the climatical phenomenon which struck Kenya’s coastal region, causing heavy rains that swamped some areas there, has been blamed on El Nino current.

El Nino, a warm current originating in the eastern Pacific, occurs every few years and disrupts weather patterns, causing drought in some cases and heavy rainfall in others.

Along Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast, it has compounded the difficulties left by ethnic violence in which over 70 people were killed in the past three months.

According to the Meteorological Department of Kenya (MDK), the region has experienced rainfall measuring over 750 milimetres in the past seven days. The MDK warned that more rains were expected in the coming months.

“This could mean more poor harvests, food shortages, higher prices and a slow economic growth in the country,” it said.

The Kenyan authorities said it would require millions of dollars to repair and rebuild roads and individual property devastated by the torrential rains which continue to pound the province and which have already caused the destruction of more than 16 bridges.

El Nino’s effect was felt earlier this year, during the March- May rainy season, when poor rains affected grain, coffee and tea production in central and western Kenya and caused food shortages.

The October-December rainy season has now brought its share of woes, with storms battering Kenya’s eastern coast, and the MDK has warned that next year’s main season could again be disappointing.

In September, Sudanese rebel leader, colonel John Garang, appealed for international aid for an estimated 2.5 million starving in the south of his country.

Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), told journalists here that an “acute food shortage” had been caused in southern Sudan by the “El Nino effect”.