2024-01-10 11:25:14
The province of Équateur, in the west of the DRC, is affected by severe flooding. Following recurring rains since mid-October, the region has suffered significant damage. According to the Caritas network, some 686,000 people are now affected.
Published on: 01/10/2024 – 12:25
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Buildings, houses and roads collapsed, causing thousands of victims. The Caritas organization is asking for assistance with food, accommodation sites and medical care.
Father Louis Iyeli, the Caritas representative on site, describes a very worrying situation for the victims. : « People live in water, the water still continues to push, every day, it goes up, it goes up… We don’t really know how it will end. Lots of damage and the collapse of residential houses, there is nothing to be done. These houses, which are built of adobe or adobe bricks, are all on the ground. And then the other houses are also submerged in water. Apart from the residential houses, there are churches, school infrastructures, there are health centers. People have deserted offices, stores, warehouses, all that, there is no longer any way for people to continue working or selling. »
The abbot fears that diseases might spread following these floods: “ People spend the night in canoes and live on that water. They relieve themselves in this water, they wash in this water, they prepare [à manger, NDLR] with this water, it’s truly catastrophic. Water-borne diseases cannot spare the population. And where people have been buried too, there are bodies that are dug up. I’ve been in Mbandaka for a long time, this time, it’s unprecedented, it’s terrible. It’s terrible. »
A call for help to the government
Living in the provincial capital Mbandaka, Joseph Bayoko Lokondo, president of the NGO “Solidarity for a Better Future”, evokes an exceptional phenomenon in the area: “ I have never experienced such a flood, it is the first in over forty years. The city of Mbandaka is experiencing a disaster, linked to the serious floods which submerged a large part of the city. And today, we have several hundred households who have no homes, no support until now for the population. This is what we denounce.
Faced with this, he calls on the government for help: “ No management meeting has been organized by the local authorities who are rather concerned regarding the publication election results. I am asking the government to be able to urgently convene a humanitarian meeting, to try to carry out a multi-sectoral assessment to try to help this population who, for the most part, spend their nights under the stars. »
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