Floods in southern Africa

Mozambique floods hit power exports, displace 70,000 – ‘There used to be only a few crocodiles in the Limpopo River. Now there are a lot.’

SABC,

25 January, 2013

Floods in southern Mozambique have displaced up to 70 000 people and cut power exports to energy-hungry neighbour South Africa in half, officials said yesterday. The south and centre of the country have been placed on red alert after experiencing the heaviest rainfall since devastating floods killed some 800 people in 2000.

In some places current water levels are higher than they were during that disaster. As the Limpopo River raged through the southern town of Chokwe, people slept in the open, many by the roadside, local media reported.

The record flood levels submerged houses in some places, emergency officials said. "We are sending seven days of food for 70 000 people," the country's international humanitarian head Lola Castro told AFP.

But she added: "Our in-country stocks are limited. We are requesting donor support." Nine rivers in six water systems were still above disaster levels by yesterday. The waters were predicted to drop in Chokwe, but rise at the Limpopo River's mouth in Xai-Xai on the Indian Ocean.

Aid agencies are sending trucks with food and emergency supplies to emergency shelters near Chokwe, where people are still arriving on foot or the back of trucks.

Helicopters would start rescuing people stranded on rooftops from today, said Castro. Meanwhile convoys of cars packed with people's belongings were leaving Xai-Xai, capital of southern province Gaza, as the city braced for the deluge, an AFP correspondent reported.

Onlookers crowded the banks of the swollen Limpopo River watching evacuations. Authorities say most people heeded the warning to move to higher ground. Aid agencies are sending trucks with food and emergency supplies to emergency shelters near Chokwe, where people are still arriving on foot or the back of trucks.

Most are women, children and the elderly. So far very little food has reached them since they fled their homes early Tuesday. Locals were slow to evacuate the town, which complicated humanitarian programmes, said Castro.

Mozambique remains one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 184th out of 187 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index. Heavy rains are predicted to pelt the south until next Tuesday. In neighbouring South Africa 15 000 crocodiles escaped from a farm as the Limpopo flooded upstream from Mozambique.

Key power lines to South Africa were also damaged by the flooding of the Limpopo, Hilary Joffe, a spokesperson for South Africa's energy giant Eskom, said. "That has meant the supplies from Mozambique have been reduced. We are getting much less than 650 megawatts ... which is less than half of what it should be."

Eskom imports between 1 300 and 1 500 megawatts of electricity from Mozambique's Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), the operators of one of Africa's largest hydro-electric projects.Work is underway to fix the transmission line, and South Africa is helping its impoverished neighbour with the repairs, Eskom says.

It is getting electricity from other providers to avoid brownouts.

Thousands of crocodiles on the loose after South Africa floods

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Some 15,000 crocodiles escaped from a South African reptile farm in flood waters this week and were on the loose in and around one of southern Africa's biggest rivers, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

"There used to be only a few crocodiles in the Limpopo River. Now there are a lot," Zane Langman, whose in-laws own the farm in the northern part of the country told Beeld newspaper.

Langman said only half the escaped crocodiles from the Rakwena Crocodile Farm close to the Botswana border had been recaptured, the report said.

Langman added that farm gates were opened out of fear the rushing flood water would crush the crocodiles.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/us-safrica-crocodiles-idUSBRE90N0OT20130124