5 Children Feared Dead As Rain Flood Ravages Yola

 

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Many families have been displaced and business owners disorganised following a heavy rain that has caused gutters to overflow into homes, shops, worship places, and all conceivable places mostly in lowland areas of the expansive Jimeta area of Yola metropolis.

Authorities have put the human casualty to between three to five, with details still being awaited by Friday afternoon.

The Executive Secretary of the Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency (ADSEMA), Dr Muhammed Suleiman, told DAILY POST on phone that a team he sent to access the extent of damage was yet to return, but that he understood that four or five children might have died in Jambutu and Wurojabe, as well as Jimeta, Yola North LGA; and possibly in Yolde Pate in Yola South LGA.

Also, the Yola North Transition Committee Chairman, Adamu Ibrahim Wakili, who addressed newsmen after an assessment tour of the LGA, said the destruction to property was massive.

“We have never experienced this one to two hours of intensive rain and heavy flooding before. Many were rendered homeless. We have just seen a tailor shop where three sewing machines were swept away,” the Yola North chairman said.

He said he was not sure how many people died, but he put the number at three, occurring at Jambutu and Wurojabe.

The rain which started at sundown in Yola town on Thursday, extended to Jimeta where it became heavier as the day wore on, ceased for a few minutes and then poured down once more until Jimeta households not usually affected by flooding had a full dose of it.

Most streets, especially in the perennially flood-prone Jambutu and Bachure as well as other parts of the main town of Jimeta became one massive water body, making vehicular movement difficult as motorists could scarcely see their way around, resulting in traffic gridlock that lasted deep into the night.

Most residents not at home when the rain started were warned to stay away as rainwater had turned access ways to deep ponds of dirty water, while those at home watched helplessly as the mud-washed rainwater swirled around their compounds and rooms.

When the rain eventually stopped, many residents had to wait for long hours for the rainwater to recede before seeing what they could reclaim of their household effects and tidy up their surroundings.

Many were still doing the tidying up by early Friday afternoon when this report was being concluded.

“This is the first time I am seeing this magnitude of flood since I came to this place, and this is my seventh year here,” a resident of the Kofare area of Jimeta, Mrs Rejoice Taye, told our correspondent.

Mrs Rejoice Taye who said she was at work at Demsawo, another section of Jimeta, when the rain started, recalled how she got back to her flooded home, “My niece who was at home with my kids, called on phone to tell me that the house had been overtaken by water. I became troubled and said I must know exactly how my children were fairing. But getting home was a scary experience. The street had become a river. I had to enter it, with water reaching as high up as above my knee cap.”

She said her kids were well protected, as they were moved to a neighbouring compound where there was an apartment high enough for the rainwater not to have entered it.

Many parts of Yola town and Jimeta were yet to have light by Friday afternoon after the Yola Electricity Distribution Company (YEDC) cut off power supply on Thursday due to the damage done to some of its power stations by the rain and flood.