Climate change is causing heavier downpours in Angola

Rains of just two days cause great misfortunes

Good morning. My name is Sofonie Dala!

We are here in Angola suffering from heavy torrential rains.

The continuous weekend rains surprised people. These rains flooded hundreds of houses, many people are already homeless.

All these heavy rainfall events are linked to climate change.

We need to act, we need to reduce our environmental pollution. We need to change for the sake of the environment, we need to find solutions that would help us adapt to climate change.

We need to stop all our negative acts on the environment, because the damage is certain and real.

While other nations say that ordinarily, more rain is a blessing, the same cannot be said in Angola. Usually the rains in this country cause floods, misfortunes, fear, losses and deaths.

 

Horror rainy scenes - Weekend 26-27 November 2022

At least two dead and one injured is the balance of the rains that fell on Luanda over the weekend, which affected 1,215 people and caused hundreds of floods, announced the Civil Protection and Fire Service.

The rains left 238 homes flooded, five homes destroyed, 243 families affected, a total of 1,215 people. Two minors, aged seven and 14, had died and a 28-year-old person was injured, all victims in the municipality of Cazenga.

The seven-year-old child died as a result of a baobab tree falling on the house where he lived, which injured another 28-year-old, both members of the same family.

The victim ended up losing his life in the hospital. As for the other death, it is a 14-year-old boy who fell into a drainage ditch.

After all this, I think Angola urgently needs global support. At least to reduce unnecessary deaths mainly of innocent children.

I would like to mention that the majority of people who lose their lives in the rains are poor people living below the poverty line. They mostly live in uninhabitable zones where their homes are built on weak foundations.

I would also like to mention that many other deaths and misfortunes are caused by government negligence, for example the case of the 14-year-old boy who fell into a drainage ditch abandoned by the government. This could be avoided.

Residents have several times written letters to the administration in order to close the ditch before the rain appears, but no letters have been answered. When the incident happened, the firefighters only showed up when it was too late. And it has always been like this.

Several road accidents, without human casualties, but with slight unquantified material damage were also some of the consequences of the light rain that fell this Sunday afternoon.

These misfortunes and storms happen every year whenever there is rain in a day, week, month or just a weekend.

How long are we going to live like this? Is there no longer a solution for this?