Khartoum braced for flood misery

Khartoum residents are having to depend on sand-bags

By Ishbel Matheson in Khartoum

In the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, residents are bracing themselves for flood waters expected to reach the city within days.

The Nile, which snakes through the city, is swollen, fast-moving and perilously close to the top of its banks.

The governor of the city, Hashim Haroum, says the next seven days will be critical but meteorologists in neighbouring Ethiopia forecast that the threat will continue into September.

In at least one low-lying part of the city, the island of Tuti, residents have mounted an around-the-clock watch.

Upstream destruction

There are sand bags to shore up the river bank, but not many and not enough to withstand a sudden big surge of flood water.

The floods have already caused huge damage outside Khartoum

They seem a very fragile defence. In one place rising groundwater has already turned a football pitch into a lake.

Further upstream the Nile has already reached its highest level for 20 years, causing widespread destruction.

The people who live along the Nile are used to seasonal fluctuations in the river, but this year exceptionally heavy rain further upstream caused a dramatic rise in water level.

The Nile is running at a higher level than in August 1988, when the river burst its banks, leaving dozens dead and two million homeless.

Severe flooding this time has already driven thousands of people from their homes and destroyed crops and property.

Summer rains

A government weather station in northern Ethiopia predicts that the Blue Nile will continue to swell well into September, bringing floods to Sudan.

Summer rains in Ethiopia, where the Blue Nile rises in the north-western highlands, have been 25% heavier than normal this year, Endalakachew Bekele, a meteorologist at the station, explains.

The rains are causing the river and its tributaries to swell to abnormal levels as it flows in a north-westerly direction into Sudan.

The weather station measured rainfall of 136 mm and 230 mm on two consecutive days in August.

The Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile at Khartoum to form the Nile proper, contributes more than 80% of the total volume of the river as it flows north through Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea.