Over 30 Houses, 200 Displaced In Calabar Flood

Over 30 housing units were submerged while 200 persons have been rendered homeless in Calabar, Cross River State, following a heavy downpour at the weekend.

Some of the areas affected include 8-Mile, CRUTECH staff quarters, Howell, Okoro Agbor, Goldie and Target streets.

Other areas include Efut Unwanse community in Calabar South, Mbukpa, Muritala Mohammed Highway, Wappi junction among others.

The flood which followed five hours of heavy downpour, also grounded business activities and movement in Calabar, the state capital.

When some of the affected areas were visited shortly after the rain, residents were seen evacuating soaked valuables from their homes to forestall further damages.

Other victims were seen scooping water from their rooms to pave the way for them to locate their property that were already submerged by the flash storm water.

One of the flood victims, Charity Okpong, 58, lamented that properties worth millions of naira had been lost to the disaster.

She, however, called on the government to come to their aid by relocating residents of the flood prone areas to safer part of Calabar city.

“This is what we have been passing through for the past years. Each time there is heavy downpour, we don’t sleep. We keep vigil to protect our property but even at that, water still washes away out properties,” she said.

Collins Ikpi, who resides at the Cross River University of Technology, CRUTECH, staff quarters, pleased with the government to save them from the menace.

Speaking on the issue, the Director of the State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, John Obaji, said most times the flood is caused by residents of the affected areas, who indiscriminately dump refuse inside the water channels.

He said the government was putting modalities in place to tackle flood headlong.

“A team of SEMA staff has gone round to the flood affected areas. But the thing is that, sometimes this flood is caused by the inhabitants of those areas,” Mr. Obaji said.

“If you ask them to dump their refuse at the appropriate places for evacuation by the relevant agency of the government, most of the people would rather dump them into gutters and drainages.

“Our officials who worked under the rain were able to clear some of the drainages to allow free flow of water. From our assessment, about thirty houses were affected and over two hundred persons were displaced.”

Also speaking, the state Commissioner for Information, Mike Eraye, corroborated what Mr. Obaji said, adding that the government was exploring ways of addressing the problem through counterpart funding with relevant agencies of the federal government.

He added that the state governor, Ben Ayade, was committed to making life comfortable for the people of the state.