Lethal floods bring disaster to Horn of Africa
Pastor Dale Morgan
Lethal floods bring disaster to Horn of Africa*
Drought, then deadly flooding in Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia
August 27, 2006 Posted: 1242 GMT (2042 HKT)
NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- A disastrous cycle of drought and flood has
hit the Horn of Africa, bringing misery and death to some of the
continent's poorest regions.
Areas that experienced painful drought for several months from late 2005
are suffering deadly flooding caused by abnormally heavy seasonal rains.
Flash floods from overflowing rivers have killed almost 1,000 people and
displaced about 120,000 in parts of Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia
since early August.
Ethiopia and humanitarian agencies asked for $60.9 million in aid on
Friday for nearly 200,000 people affected by the flooding, described by
one Ethiopian official as "a nightmare."
"The current devastating flood problem is the worst that has been
observed in a generation," said Simon Mechale, the head of Ethiopia's
disaster agency.
Cyclical rains have been exacerbated by winds coming from the Indian and
Atlantic Oceans and weather systems off the northwest coast of Africa,
experts say.
"Depending on the surface temperatures over these oceans, the winds that
blow from those areas can be extremely moisture-laden," Peter Ambenje,
assistant director for forecasting at Kenya's Meteorological Department,
told Reuters.
"If the winds are moisture-laden, then we get a lot of rainfall."
Rains drenching Ethiopia's highlands have made rivers overflow, causing
flooding in the south and east of the country as well as in Sudan, aid
agencies said.
"It's the rainfall on the Ethiopian highlands that is the principal
cause of this flooding," said Steve Penny, coordinator for flood relief
for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"It's a very, very worrying situation."
Aid agencies say more rivers are likely to overflow as heavy rains are
expected to continue for another month.
Rising levels in Kenya's northern Lake Turkana have hampered its
capacity to absorb excess rain waters flowing through Ethiopian rivers,
aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said.
"Lake Turkana is so high right now so the waters that normally come from
rivers in Ethiopia can no longer flow into that lake," said Willem De
Jonge, country manager for the Dutch section of MSF.
Ethiopia's dams and levees are straining to hold the water back and some
could burst in the next few weeks, flooding anew the remote south where
the Omo River burst its banks two weeks ago and killed 364 people, he added.
Floods have killed at least 27 people and destroyed thousands of homes
in Sudan, even threatening government ministries and the Republican
Palace in Khartoum.
Tens of thousands of square kilometers of farmland, in a country where
most people depend on agriculture, were flooded.
Floods have also hit Somalia, where a girl died on Friday after a river
burst its banks in the southern town of Jowhar.
Hundreds of residents were said to be fleeing the area.
"There's growing fear the flooding will cause displacement as well as
diseases such as malaria...it's already cut off the main road from
Jowhar to Mogadishu," said Cindy Holleman, technical manager for the
U.N. Food Security Analysis Unit.