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Flooding caused 210 deaths in west Africa, said UN
Dakar (AFP) Oct 17, 2007 The worst flooding in 30 years that battered west Africa from July hyas caused more than 210 deaths and affected more than 785,000 people, a UN humanitarian regional coordinator in Dakar said Wednesday. "We are now in the after-crisis, with the end of the rains," UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) official Herve Ludovic de Lys said during a press conference. "Today, the issue is to evaluate the impact at medium and long-term, notably to evaluate the expanse of the area affected by the rains, the livestock losses... and mobilise funds" to distribute them to the sectors needed, he said. De Lys mentioned two projects have been created to implement a better response to natural catastrophes in west Africa: emergency stores of goods and a regional solidarity fund. According to de Lys, the heads of the 15 nations that are members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) agreed two years ago to set up an emergency depot of non-food goods, such as tents, containers and water purification systems in Bamako, Mali. For now, the materials are held in big UN warehouses in Brindisi, southern Italy. The construction of the Bamako site still has not started but the goods depot should be operational "maybe in 2008 if there is political will," de Lys said. "It is also necessary that ECOWAS create a team to manage emergency situations and verify actual needs" when a member state asks for aid, he added. "If the Bamako depot could be coupled with a regional solidarity fund, it would be perfect," he said. The catastrophic rains hit almost half of all African countries, causing a total of more than 350 deaths and hundreds of thousands of affected people. De Lys said in general, west African governments had "reacted relatively well" and that when they needed to ask for foreign help, "this isn't strange." According to a statement distributed by OCHA, the countries most affected are Nigeria, with 68 deaths and 50,000 affected, Ghana, counting 56 deaths and 332,000 affected, 46 dead Burkina Faso and 92,970 affected by the floods, and Togo, with 23 deaths and 120,000 affected, of which 11,483 have been displaced. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters When the Earth Quakes A world of storm and tempest
Indonesians ignore warnings of imminent volcano eruption
Blitar, Indonesia (AFP) Oct 17, 2007Scores of evacuated villagers ignored mounting warnings of an imminent eruption and returned to their homes on the slopes of an active volcano on Indonesia's Java island Wednesday. |
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