Mozambique floods displace 68,000

Experts fear the crisis could surpass the devastating floods of 2000 and 2001, which killed 700 people, displaced half a million and wrecked infrastructure.

 

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“We expect more water than we had in 2001… The situation is deteriorating and it will get worse, but this time we are better prepared than in 2001,” Zucula said in an interview in Caia, one of the worst hit areas, 1,400km north of the capital, Maputo.

 

The floods, sparked when rains from neighbouring Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi poured into the overflowing Cahora Bassa Dam, have killed 29 people and damaged thousands of homes and schools, mainly in the central Zambezia and Sofala provinces.

 

Homeless again

 

Many face homelessness for the second time after the floods six years ago wrecked their homes. Even in accommodation centres, food, water and medicine are scarce and shelter limited.

 

In Chapunga, in Sofala, about 600 people flocked to an accommodation centre, but tents are scarce and many are sleeping in the open.

 

Joaquim Dausse, 45, said: “I lost everything, I brought my wife and my two sick children and we are sleeping in the open, there are no tents and there is no food here.

 

“This is the second time I’m facing this flooding … I can’t believe it,” Dausse said, hunched beside a sick child whose bloated tummy hinted at malnutrition.