Ethiopia's Flood Misery Deepens as Rains Threaten Dams

AFP

Ethiomedia -- ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - Ethiopia braced for more damage from deadly nationwide flash floods as the government warned that unusually heavy seasonal rains could force the release of water from dangerously swollen dams.

A task force set up to deal with flooding crises that have affected nearly 75,000 people said three dams in the west, south and north of the country were close to the breaking point and advised residents in their vicinities to leave.

It said that, although controlled, the release of water from the threatened dams on the Omo, Awash and Blue Nile rivers could compound devastation from floods that have already killed at least 626 people in the south, east and north.

"Currently, the main dams are planning to release some waters, and the national task force is advising people living near the dams and downstream to take precautionary measures and, if possible, move to higher ground," it said Sunday.

The facilities are the Gilgel Gibe dam on the Omo River, which has already flooded huge areas in the southwest; the Koka dam on the Awash River that has flooded in the east; and the Tise Aby dam on the Blue Nile in the north.

The release of water from these dams "may flood some areas," the task force said in a statement released by the information ministry.

In addition to the confirmed deaths, some 250 people are missing and 73,000 are affected, many of them left homeless by the raging waters that have killed thousands of valuable livestock and flooded huge tracts of farmland.

Officials said they had relocated at least 15,000 people to safer areas in view of the increasing threat of fresh flooding across the country, according to state television.

Some 13,000 people in the northern region and another 2,000 in the south had been relocated for fear of further flooding and landslides.

Overwhelmed authorities have appealed for international aid, and US soldiers began relief work on Saturday in the town of Dire Dawa, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Addis Ababa, which was hit by floods on August 6.

The 35 Djibouti-based US naval engineers were setting up 52 large tents to house many of 6,000 people displaced by the waters, which killed 256, and erecting sanitation facilities amid growing fears of the spread of water-borne diseases.

"I am very impressed with what the Ethiopians and the others are doing to help the displaced. I am glad that we are part of this operation," Richard Hunt, head of the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, told AFP by phone.

With poor weather continuing to hamper relief efforts, particularly in the southwest Omo River valley where 364 drowned last week and up to 8,000 remain marooned in 14 inundated villages, officials feared a rise in the death toll.

"The rain in the highlands has continued, and the river waters are showing no signs of decreasing," said Major Solomon Gebere Michael, commander of army relief operations in the Southern Nationalities, Nations and People's state.

"It is hurting the search and rescue mission," he told AFP by phone from Amorate, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Addis Ababa.

Military helicopters dangling special forces troops from ropes and ladders continued to fly over affected areas, dropping food and water and attempting where possible to pluck survivors from roofs and tree tops, Solomon said.

At the same time, he said rescue teams in boats had begun to face difficulties due to powerful currents and obstacles in newly created vast marsh areas in the Omo basin.

Meteorologists have warned that six areas in the north, west and south of the country will likely face further flood threats from the downpours that are expected to continue until the end of the June-to-September rainy season.

Ethiopia has repeatedly suffered heavy floods and droughts in recent years, devastating agriculture that provides a livelihood for the majority of the 70 million people living in the Horn of Africa nation.


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Extensive Flooding in Ethiopia: WFP Update

Reuters AlertNet -- Above normal rainfall has caused several rivers in Ethiopia to burst their banks and overflow, resulting in extensive flooding in many areas and subsequent loss of life.

To date, 618 people are officially confirmed dead after two major floods in separate regions – in southern and eastern Ethiopia. This figure is likely to rise as hundreds of people are still unaccounted for.

Floods are relatively common in Ethiopia during the rainy season between June and September when heavy rains from the highlands flow unchecked into the low lands. But in recent weeks, the flooding has been unusually intense and extensive.

Flooding (of varying intensity) has been reported from nearly all parts of the country.

Over 70,000 people have been affected; including some 16,000 who are known to have been displaced.

The National Meteorological Agency has indicated that normal to above normal rainfall, over large parts of the country, is likely in the next few days, which may induce severe flash floods.

Dire Dawa

In the early hours of 6 August, a flash flood hit Dire Dawa, Ethiopia’s second largest city, 500 kms east of Addis Ababa.

Some 254 people died and more than 200 are still missing. However, there has been no further flooding in the affected areas. Relief operations continue.

Huge quantities of mud and sand were dumped in Dire Dawa town and the surrounding areas after the Dechatu River burst its banks. The floods swept away houses, vehicles and animals, destroying markets and shops and damaging infrastructure.

Some 10,000 people have been affected or displaced by the flooding in Dire Dawa, and thousands are still camped in temporary shelters such as schools and tents. Many say these are the worst floods to have hit the town since 1997.

WFP activities

Registration and assessment of the displaced and affected was completed by WFP and the government at the end of last week (11 August) and WFP targeted food distributions began on 15 August.

WFP is providing beneficiaries with a one month ration, consisting of cereals, vegetable oil, CSB and salt.

Non-food items: plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and jerry cans from WFP’s warehouses in Dire Dawa, are also being distributed.

WFP is taking the lead among UN agencies and NGO’s in coordinating the delivery of general relief assistance.

WFP Ethiopia has deployed logistics officers, field monitors and staff from Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa offices to assist the local administration and other UN agencies.

A WFP flood task force is supporting and monitoring emergency operations not only in Dire Dawa, but throughout the country. The emergency response is complicated by the huge logistical challenges involved in finding temporary shelter and accommodation for such large numbers of people.

The local authorities in Dire Dawa have banned the rebuilding of settlements on the river banks and have declared the area a disaster zone.

Omo River, Southern Ethiopia

The Omo River, which flows into Kenya’s Lake Turkana, burst its banks between 8 and 13 August. Extensive flooding occurred in one district of south Omo zone with heavy loss of lives and property. Around 14 villages are flooded and cut off. To date, 364 people have been confirmed dead. As of 17 August, the number of displaced has risen to 8,350 from 6,000.

The Omo region is a remote area about 800 kilometres south of Addis Ababa.

Lack of communications and infrastructure in this large, relatively barren region, mean that details of the flooding only emerged at the beginning of the week (14 August).

A WFP field monitor on the scene said that some 2,700 heads of cattle and 760 traditional silos of grain have been washed away. As news comes in from remote villages now encircled by flood waters, the number of dead will undoubtedly increase.

The loss of so many heads of livestock is a disaster for the predominant pastoralists since livestock is their main source of income.

WFP’s field monitor is travelling by boat, to the affected islands dotted in and around the river, assisting with the search and rescue operations.

The government has sent high energy biscuits, grain, vegetable oil, pulses, and CSB and non-food items including jerry cans, blankets and plastic plates to the region. Helicopters have apparently started to drop food to flood victims.

WFP has some food stocks in its nearest warehouses in Awassa (approximately 600 kms from south Omo), and is ready to provide assistance as soon as the needs have been assessed.

WFP’s field monitor says there is an urgent need for tents, mosquito nets, medicine.

With corpses and carcases still floating in the flood waters, waterborne diseases are a threat. The only other UN agency represented on the ground is WHO.

Since 15 August, soldiers have been deployed and are assisting in search and rescue operations; 15 boats and one helicopter are being used, as well as army divers.

WFP Ethiopia’s logistics unit is in close contact with the government and is ready to offer support.

The government is urgently procuring life jackets on the local market. They are also purchasing half a million bags to be filled with sand to contain the floods.

A high level mission from the federal government in Addis Ababa and the regional government is in the affected area to assess the severity and magnitude of the disaster.

Poor weather conditions have hampered relief operations, preventing helicopters from landing and forcing rescue workers to use boats to help survivors. Uncertainty about the depth of the flood waters has also prevented helicopters from landing.

Amhara Region, Northern Ethiopia

Five districts are now affected by floods in this region. At least 2,200 people have been displaced in the Tana region. More and more people are being relocated by local authorities out of the flood-prone areas.

The total population affected by the current floods in this region alone is reported to be 34,000. Unconfirmed reports put the number of deaths at between 2 and 5 people.

The government has allocated food and non-food items for the displaced.

On 17 August, WFP staff joined an assessment team to visit one of the severely affected areas.

Reports of flooding and displacements have come from many other areas in Afar and Tigray, in northern Ethiopia and even in one district of Somali region, where until recently, was suffering from drought.

The Ethiopian government has appealed for help from the international community in swiftly responding to the disaster.

According to the government, the water levels of many major rivers (as well as Lake Tana and the major dams) have been rising and are threatening to burst their banks, causing substantial flooding.

More rains could cause the dams to spill over. To protect the country’s power generation plants, the government is likely to release water from the dams, which would seriously affect communities down stream and along the rivers banks. Precautionary measures such as strengthening or repairing of dykes and moving residents from the most vulnerable areas need to be done well in advance. The government has told people living around the most flood-prone areas to, “take precautions to avoid what could be a nationwide flood catastrophe.”

A team, comprising representatives from government, WFP and USAID are preparing an assessment along the Awash River (which is hundreds of kilometres long). The mission will determine the potential numbers who might be affected, if the Awash rises above its current level.

The Koka Dam which provides most of Ethiopia’s hydro electric power, is upstream of the Awash River, and is expected to release some of its waters in the coming days.

With many state farms and plantations along the Awash River, the economic impact could be massive if these were damaged or destroyed.


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Ethiopian 'Green Chemical' Plant Could Weed Out Polluting Glue

The Australian -- THE dry valleys of eastern Ethiopia are home to a tall and rather tatty weed called vernonia. Its shiny, black seeds yield an extraordinary oil - potentially a living source of epoxy compounds that are currently produced entirely from petrochemicals.

An agreement signed this month by the Ethiopian Government and Vernique Biotech, a British-based start-up company, aims to commercialise vernonia oil as a "green chemical". With worldwide epoxy sales estimated at $US15 billion ($19.7 billion) a year in the plastics, paints and adhesives industries, "vernonia has the potential to become the industrial soya bean of the 21st century", one of the company's co-founders, Paul McClory, says.

McClory, an environmental businessman, says vernonia oil avoids the polluting volatile organic compounds associated with petrochemical epoxy sources, without sacrificing technical performance. It will compete economically, once large-scale cultivation is under way.

The agreement signed by Ethiopia and Vernique is one of the few deals negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. In exchange for access to one of the country's genetic resources, the company will pay a mix of licence fees, royalties and a share of profits to the Ethiopian Government over the next 10 years.

In addition, hundreds of local farmers will be paid to grow vernonia on land that is too poor and arid to produce good food crops.

The director-general of Ethiopia's Environmental Protection Authority, Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, says: "With petrochemical products becoming more and more expensive and environmentally less and less acceptable, I think benefits will indeed accrue to Ethiopia. For better or for worse, we are in this together and I am confident it will be for the better."

Between the 1970s and 1990s, the US Department of Agriculture carried out extensive research into vernonia, which it saw as a potentially important industrial crop for US farmers, and more than 50 US patent applications were filed. But that effort was abandoned when the USDA concluded that vernonia would not thrive in the US.

The problem was that vernonia needed a pattern of day and night found only within 20 degrees of the equator, a specialist in African agriculture and the other co-founder of Vernique, Michael Dobell, says. The company decided, therefore, to grow vernonia on its home territory in collaboration with the Ethiopians. Cultivation started in 2004, producing a small crop of seeds last year.

"We are going to grow about 200ha this season and we should get 1 to 2 tonnes of vernonia oil per hectare," Dobell says. "Within a few years we expect to be growing thousands of hectares of vernonia in Ethiopia."

Vernique is working with scientists in Britain to develop the most promising applications of vernonia oil. One collaborator is Jim Howell, a professor of chemistry at Keele University.

"One project was to make adhesive resins from rapeseed oil - but to do that you have to epoxidise the oil, which is a decidedly non-green process," Howell says. "Vernonia oil is already naturally epoxidised."

He is embarking on a collaborative project with Eastman, the US-based chemicals company, to develop vernonia oil as a base for paints.

Meanwhile, a British biotechnology entrepreneur, Tony Atkinson, is working on what he sees as an exciting range of pharmaceutical applications for vernonia oil. The most immediate one will be for the skin, to speed up wound healing and alleviate psoriasis.

The oil's epoxy groups - three-member molecular rings with an oxygen atom linked to two carbon atoms - seem to seal and stitch together broken skin through a cross-linking reaction, in a process similar to the way epoxy glue works.

In the longer run, Vernique plans to develop a drug delivery system based on vernonia oil. There is evidence it can act as a "slow-release" agent for drugs in the body, Atkinson says, or form nano-scale "vesicles" to carry drugs across the blood-brain barrier, for example in chemotherapy for brain tumours.

No one knows why a biological mechanism to make large quantities of epoxide evolved in vernonia but not in other plants. It may protect against disease or desiccation.

A biologist at Alemaya University in Ethiopia, Mohammed Abdella, went in search of wild vernonia recently in the Erer valley - once a stronghold of the species - and could not find a single plant. Farmers told him that they had eradicated the weeds to plant cereals.

"It was a shocking experience to find that such a valuable plant has been wiped out," he told McClory in an email. "If you and Michael (Dobell) had not taken the initiative to cultivate wild vernonia in Ethiopia over the last two years, we would have totally lost this species."


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According to Vernique BioTech Ltd website:

Vernonia oil is the world’s only naturally available source of “Epoxy” – a vital chemical in a wide range of industries, now produced entirely from petroleum. Epoxy resins are extremely tough and durable compounds with global sales in excess of $5 billion. Nature sourced vernonia oil is an ideal economic and sustainable replacement for many conventional epoxy resins.

Derivatives of Vernonia Oil have shown great promise as Pharmaceutical Applications:

* As a topical wound healer for both humans and animals

* As a topical treatment for many skin diseases including Psoriasis, Eczema, Scalp Dermatitis and certain types of body ulcers

* As a carrier for existing drugs to prolong their ‘half life’. For example, increasing the half-life of a drug in the human body from minutes to hours.

* Acting as a slow release agent for drugs in the body.

Derivatives of Vernonia Oil have shown great promise as Industrial Applications:

Paints with Zero VOC's
Adhesives
Epoxidised Vegetable Oils
Particle Board Bonding
Plastics
Polymers
Coatings
Emulsion Stabilizers
Epoxy Floor Coatings
Anti Corrosion Agents
Varnishes
Bio Lubricants
Fungicides

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