A South African military team prepared Thursday to leave flood-stricken Mozambique, after a frustrating week in which the rescuers found few people willing to evacuate their homes.
Thursday was the last day the more than 80-member South African military team planned to continue delivering food and other supplies to refugee camps and to isolated communities stranded by the flooded Zambezi River, Major Hugo Weich said.
Flooding is expected to gradually worsen along the Zambezi during the next three weeks, as Mozambique's rainy season continues and after authorities on Monday were forced to release even more water from the Cahora Bassa Dam.
The dam has strained to hold back torrents of water pouring in from countries upstream on the Zambezi, but authorities have been forced to gradually open the dam's sluice gates to prevent the water from overflowing into spillways.
Water released from the dam takes about 10 days to flow to the river's mouth at the Indian Ocean.
Some 50,000 people remain in high-risk areas throughout the Zambezi Valley, according to Mozambican and UN estimates, but only a few hundred of those people agreed to evacuate when helicopters arrived to take them to higher ground.
Flooding on the Zambezi and Pungwe rivers in central Mozambique has killed 75 people since January, and forced some 81,000 from their homes, according to the government.
Aid workers estimate that more than 50,000 people have moved into emergency shelters, with the other displaced people moving in with families and friends.
Mozambique is still recovering from last year's devastating floods, which killed 700 people and caused 400 million dollars in damage.
Anxious to avoid a similar loss of life, Mozambique rushed to urge people to evacuate before the flood waters rose too high.
But local officials have said that people not in life-threatening situations are reluctant to abandon their homes and livestock, which few would have the means to replace.
Those who have moved into emergency shelters found that the camps were not prepared to accommodate them immediately, and have had to wait for weeks for latrines, tents, and other basic needs to be built.
Now they face months of living on humanitarian aid in the camps, which Red Cross official Robert Fraser said would need to remain open for as long as four months.
Meanwhile, a storm that had threatened to exacerbate the flooding is expected to spare Mozambique, South African forecasters said Thursday.
The storm was located off the northeastern coast of Mozambique, and was headed out to sea with winds churning at 20-25 knots, the South African Weather Bureau said.
"We don't expect it to develop any further today, but tomorrow there is a chance that it will intensify into a tropical cyclone, but the chances at this stage are very small," a forecaster at the bureau in Pretoria said -- BEIRA, Mozambique (AFP)
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