Thousands of houses destroyed by heavy rains in Mozambique

Thousands of houses have collapsed due to heavy rainfalls in Mozambique, 22 persons have died and some 200 cases of cholera have been reported. MS’ partner, the environmental organisation AMA, is working to prevent erosion.

Houses in danger of collapsing in the Northern Nampula Province. Photo: Per Bergholdt Jensen.

The weather has caused turmoil in Mozambique in recent months. First a drought caused food shortages and consequently deaths because of starvation in Southern and Central provinces. Now heavy rainfalls cause serious problems.

Several provinces have suffered from floods after heavy tropical rainfalls. Roads and railways have been cut off or damaged, thousands of houses have collapsed due to erosion and 22 persons have been killed so far in incidents related to rains, storm and erosion. Furthermore the crops on thousands of acres have been destroyed by flooding.

The floods have contaminated water sources several places which may cause more outbreaks of dysentery, diarrhoea and cholera. According to Mozambique’s National Disaster Management Institute some 200 cases of cholera have been registered.

It is mainly poor people in rural districts areas and urban slum areas, who are affected, since their houses are mainly adobe constructions which are easily damaged by erosion. Mozambican authorities estimate that one million people will be affected by flooding in the months to come. So far there has not been declared a national state of emergency, however.

250 houses collapsed in one day

One of the most affected provinces has been Nampula in Northern Mozambique. The province capital of Nampula is a city of approximately 350.000 inhabitants, with the majority living in the so-called bairros, slum dwellings that mainly consist of adobe houses.

In one single night between the 3^rd and the 4^th of January a heavy rainstorm caused more than 250 houses to collapse in Nampula. And on Christmas Day a cyclone swept over the city with a similar result. Three persons were killed on that occasion. And the rainy season has just begun within the last month.

Lack of urban planning

The problem concerning erosion is an annual phenomenon, and the causes are in general the same every year. In the densely populated slum dwellings there is no such thing as urban planning. Often there is no water, no drainage and no electricity, and people construct wherever they can squeeze in a house. The result is endless dirt alleys that are transformed into black mud pools in the rainy season.

Since most people cannot afford proper building materials the houses mainly consist of bamboo, adobe and roofs made of straw. People that are more “well off” can pay for cement and tin roofs. The houses are constructed directly on the ground and do not have concrete foundation, which means that they are extremely exposed to heavy rain and streaming water.

The houses are often built on unsuitable sites such as riversides and slopes. When the water comes with massive force, the ground beneath the buildings is removed and the constructions consequently collapse.   

Many places the alleys in the slum dwelling are less than three feet wide. When a heavy tropical rainstorm sets in and lasts for hours, the water is “trapped”. The small streets and narrow alleys are thus turned into small, fast rivers that remove most obstacles.    

The civil war the cause of slum dwellings

The slum areas – the so-called bairros – spread around the major Mozambican cities during the civil war between 1976 and 1996. Great numbers of people escaped the rural areas where actions of war were carried out by the Marxist government forces and the right wing rebel movement, Renamo. As a result the refugees ended up in the slum areas of the cities.

The slum dwellings increased enormously and the authorities did not manage to regulate the construction of houses. The lack of urban planning resulted in a chaotic growth of entire vicinities with no water, electricity or sanitation.  

Today – 14 years after the civil war ended – the situation has not improved remarkably, which the recent destructions bear witness to.

Preventive action

In the Northern Province of Cabo Delgado there are also serious erosion related problems in the slum areas. The partner of MS Mozambique, AMA (Association for the Environment), works with environmental issues in the province, and informs the slum dwellers about the dangers of erosion.

An important aspect in the work of AMA is preventing the causes of erosion. For instance, the slum dwellers are informed about the dangers of constructing houses on exposed locations, as well as of the advantages of sowing plants on eroded soils. The roots of the plants hold back both water and earth, and thus diminish the destructive effects of the rain falls.

Another problem concerning erosion in Mozambique is that many farmers practice the slash and burn method: they burn down the vegetation on vast territories in order to facilitate the cultivation of different crops. But when the rains sets in the burnt down plants can no longer hold back the water or the soil, and massive quantities of fertile soil and sowing seeds are washed away during the rain falls.

AMA informs about the consequences of these traditional cultivation methods, and the activists of the organisation try to alter the agricultural practices of the farmers through information and awareness rising.

In December of 2005 AMA received the Environment Match Prize, worth 50.000 Danish Kroner (some 8.000 US$), which is awarded by the Danish Ministry of Environment.