Mozambique: Meteorologists warn of possible formation offshore of tropical storm - Lusa
A Verdade (File photo)
The number of deaths in Mozambique caused by the storms that have characterized the 2016-2017 rainy season, has risen to 47, according to data presented in Maputo on Thursday by the Natural Disaster Coordinating Council (CCGC).
Speaking to reporters at the end of the Council meeting, the spokesperson for the country’s relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC), Paulo Tomas, said that the number of people affected by the storms stands at 90,000.
The number of houses damaged by the heavy rains and high winds has risen to 24,000, and 9,000 houses have been completely destroyed.
Tomas said that many of the 47 deaths were caused by lightning strikes, adding that the INGC and its partners have recommended a study into why so many people were being killed by lightning.
He announced that accommodation centres set up to shelter people temporarily displaced by storms and flooding in the southern province of Inhambane (in Govuro district, and in Inhambane and Maxixe cities) have now been dismantled.
At the height of the Inhambane storms last month, they accommodated about 400 people. Those families have now received plots of land on which to build new homes.
As for the immediate future, Acacio Tembe, of the National Meteorology Institute (INAM), said moderate to heavy rains can be expected as from Friday in the central provinces of Sofala, Zambezia and Tete, with 50 millimetres of rain falling over a two day period.
But in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula, he warned, rainfall has been below normal for this time of year.
In the south, there is concern at possible flooding in the Limpopo river basin in Gaza province. According to Thursday’s issue of the Hydrological Bulletin from the national water resources directorate, water flowing in from neighbouring countries has raised the Limpopo to 29 centimetres above flood alert level at Pafuri, where the Mozambican, Zimbabwean and South African borders meet. The flood surge is moving downstream and by Sunday the river could be above alert level at the next measuring station, in Combomune.
On the Umbeluzi river, which supplies the Greater Maputo Metropolitan Area with its drinking water, the situation remains critical. The level of the reservoir at the Pequenos Libombos dam is rising, but very slowly. The reservoir was 15.68 per cent full on Thursday. While this is a slight improvement on the level of 13.7 per cent of mid-January, it is nowhere near sufficient to allow the Maputo Regional Water Company (AdeM) to lift the current water rationing measures.
Water is still leaving the reservoir at a rate of only 1.5 cubic metres a second, and so each neighbourhood in Maputo and Matola cities and Boane district continues to receive water on alternate days.
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