Flood wrecks havoc in Jos

A heavy rainfall that lasted several hours on Friday has rendered hundreds of residents homeless in Jos, the Plateau State capital, with property worth million of naira destroyed.
Residents in Angwan Suya and Akpata areas of the city were worst hit.
Alhassan Barde, the Executive Secretary of the Plateau State Emergency Management Agency, said many houses and property worth millions of naira were destroyed by the flood.
Barde said, however, that no life was lost in the incident, noting that officials of SEMA had been deployed to the affected areas for assessment.
He said: “We have gone to affected areas with the National Emergency Management Agency officials and we saw the damages caused by the disaster.
“Our officials are still in the areas collating the data of the houses and other properties that were destroyed.
“We will know the extent of the damage for government at all levels to intervene.”
The executive secretary said that most of the houses affected were those built on water ways.
He said: “We have advised people living in flood-prone areas to vacate those places, based on NIMET’s predictions that there would be heavy rainfall this year but many people did not heed our advice.
“The situation is an avoidable one, if the people had complied with the series of sensitisation campaigns we carried out.
“We will continue with campaigns until people move to safer grounds.”
Peter Omogie of T12 Angwan Suya Street, a victim of the flood, told NAN that he lost almost everything to the flood but thanked God that no life was lost.
Omogie said: “We were at home when the rain started at about 3:30pm and it lasted for several hours.
“We started noticing water entering the room and the house was suddenly full of water.
“We were looking for higher places within the house to climb as the water volume kept increasing.
“Suddenly, the back wall of my children’s room collapsed and everything in the room was washed into the stream that was behind the building.”
Victoria Anamalechi, a widow and mother of three, told NAN that she was in the market when the rain started.
Anamalechi said: “I left my children alone at home because I lost my husband in January this year and since then I have been struggling to fend for myself and the children.
“When the rain grew too heavy they (children) became scared and started crying and my neighbour heard them and took them to her house otherwise it wouldn’t have been my property alone.”
Most of the victims appealed to government and well-meaning individuals to come to their aid as they had lost everything to the flood.