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Floods adding to misery in drought-hit east Africa
Written by: James Kilner
People crowd a minibus driving on a flooded road after torrential rains in southern Mogadishu, May 21, 2009. The U.N. refugee agency is asking the Kenyan government to expand Africa's biggest refugee camp, which mainly houses people fleeing violence from neighbouring Somalia. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
LONDON (AlertNet) - Heavy rain from the El Nino weather system has started to flood parts of east Africa and over the next few weeks will inflict more misery on an area already struggling with the worst drought in a decade. Thousands of people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia have fled the flooding, and aid agencies are preparing to evacuate hundreds of thousands more when further rain pours down on the hard, sun-baked ground. "As many as 750,000 people may eventually be affected by floods and landslides from the current rainy season," the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on the U.N. news website. Over the past week, around 15,000 people in Somalia and nearly 5,000 people living on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast have moved into safer areas, OCHA said. When rain falls after a prolonged drought, it quickly runs off as the ground is too hard to absorb it. Drought also weakens land cohesion and landslides are common in areas hit by heavy rains. And the flood waters also spread disease. "In drought areas where cattle are weak and children malnourished flood waters can quickly spread water-borne diseases," said Alun McDonald, spokesman at Oxfam's office in Nairobi. And overcrowded areas in Kenya were particularly high risk. "One concern are the slums in Nairobi," he said. "They were overcrowded anyway but because of the drought they have beomce even more crowded as people moved in from the drought areas. This could be quite serious." El Nino, which means "little boy" in Spanish, is the abnormal warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that induces severe weather patterns and heavy rain. Aid agencies have already appealed for emergency funds to alleviate the effects of the drought in east Africa which, they say, is causing severe food and water shortages and affecting about 23 million people. But the heavy rain from El Nino is no relief from the drought. "The consequences include massive displacement of populations and destroyed infrastructure, leading to escalated food prices in the affected regions," the Kenyan Red Cross said. And the flood waters and humidity will also spread diseases such as malaria and pneumonia, said Georg Nothelle, head of Malteser International's Africa department, in a statement. Malteser International is a Germany-based relief agency which has about 200 projects in 20 countries. Tadesse Kassaye, Ethiopia country manager for British aid group Health Unlimited, said low-lying areas were particularly vulnerable. "This has happened for three consecutive years and forces people to leave their homes," he said.
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1 response to “Floods adding to misery in drought-hit east Africa”
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05 Nov 2009 13:09:33 GMT
The situation in East Africa is tragic and I am glad to see that it is being reported.
I would like, however, to add some notes regarding the reporting on the impacts of El Nino. Just to clarify, El Nino is not a weather system, but the occurrence of warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This warming can result in altered atmospheric circulation patterns which can have regional impacts on seasonal precipitation. It is important to note that in some regions, this is expressed as a likely increase in average rainfall, whereas in other regions, it can result in lower than average rainfall. In some locations, however, there is no measurable tendency of precipitation change due to El Nino. The other important thing to remember, is that while El Nino is likely to produce abnormal regional precipitation regimes, this is not always the case. While, for example, it is much more likely that East Africa will experience higher than average precipitation during the rainy season of an El Nino year, this will not always be the case.