When the Levee Breaks

In the small hours of August 6, the central part of Dire Dawa, an eastern town 515Km from the capital, was drowned. The catastrophe was the worst seen in 25 years.

It was also the worst thing that could happen to Constable Setegn Haile and Mudsir Argaw. Both men lost a great deal to the deluge, with one of them losing his daughter and the other the wealth he accumulated over the last 30 years.

Setegn, a member of the Dire Dawa Police Commission, was on a leave the previous two days. He lived in a compound that he shared with his mother, his brothers and sisters and other tenants, in a neighborhood known as the Coca Cola Kebele. Despite the sound of the unusually strong rain, on that night, he was fast asleep in his home with his wife and five-year-old daughter, Helina. 

The flood struck Dire Dawa at 3am sharp on Sunday morning, according to the Dire Dawa Police Commission. Setegn heard the sounds of the approaching torrent through the heavy rain.

The last time the city had heard such a terrifying noise was  in 1981. The memory is still fresh among residents of Dire Dawa. Setegn was only four then. Getachew W. Meskel, a resident of Dire Dawa for the past 40 years, remembered that around 80 people died of the disaster.

But last weekend, when he first heard the approaching noise, he ran out into the compound and shouted to his family and neighbors in hopes that he could wake them up. Of the people that did was his neighbor Tesfaye, who ran out with his son Yohannes; the compound had already filled up with water, recalls Setegn.

Tesfaye, a footballer, immediately jumped onto the roof and Setegn started passing him the children. While Tesfaye was on the rooftop with two children, trying to save their lives and his own, Setegn, along with his brothers Gezahegn and Bahiru, had gone back to help their mother and sisters climb up on one of the rooftops, also in hopes to lay his eyes on his daughter. She was no longer there.

He started running across the rooftops calling out her name and that of Tesfaye's as well as Yohannes'. It was to no avail. All have died of the flood, with the body of only Tesfaye found later in the day, at 10:30am He was one of the 256 people reported dead. 

When the rain that was viciously beating down on Dire Dawa stopped at 6am on Sunday morning, the floods began to recede; people started questioning the whereabouts of their loved ones and asking after them. Many had simply vanished. Sadly, the bodies of Hilina and Yohannes have yet to be recovered when this paper went to press on Saturday night. They are among the hundreds of people declared missing; over 200 people were gathered inside the compound of Dil Chora Hospital on Tuesday, waiting to identify the bodies of their loved ones. Not all were lucky. 

Setegn is not only distraught with having lost his only child, but devastated that he will not be able to put her to rest properly.

The most recent flood, according to Police in Dire Dawa, was on May 20, 2004, when around 45 bodies were found and property worth 10 million Br was lost.

This time to, the floods have also resulted in great property loss and damage, leaving many of the residents of Dire Dawa stripped of their assets. Mudesir, 43, is among them devastated by the loss.

A businessman in Dire Dawa and its bordering towns for the past 30 years, he started trading in textile and small goods before moving up to selling metal and construction equipment. He had a hardware store and warehouse located in the Coca Cola Kebele that is now washed away by the flood. There was only a vacant spot, an empty land, in its place last week.

Not even his trucks worth 210,000 Br and the Fiat worth 160,000 Br as well as a forklift truck capable of carrying 30,000tns were spared. On that Saturday, they were parked in the garage at the warehouse. After the flood struck, Mudesir came from his home in Kafir, three kilometers away from where his store was located, early in the morning only to discover that he had lost everything. He estimates his loss at one million Br.

The pain of loss is even more devastating with his realization that there is no way for him to recover his losses and support his family of 12. Mudesir was close to buying a policy from Nib Insurance, one of the private insurance firms that have opened shop in town.

Mena Gayem, Dire Dawa branch manager of Nib Insurance, recalled Mudesir coming to his office to enquire about the cost of coverage. Although floods repeatedly hit the Dire Dawa area, business owners are often reluctant to buy insurance to secure their properties, according to Mena.

"I am left with nothing now," Mudesir told Fortune, standing on the empty space where his store was once located.

He was not alone. Businessman Sheikh Habib Mohammed lost coffee processing machinery as well as vehicles worth approximately 15 million Br, while Amdeyel milk processing company was completely wiped out.

Other agencies that have been hit by the floods are the Ethio-Djibouti Railway Enterprise, the Ethiopian Electricity Power Corporation, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, the Dire Dawa branch of the Ethiopian Transport Authority, and a Harer Clean Water project office.

The total cost in property lost is yet to emerge, as the Dire Dawa Provisional Administration is setting up a taskforce to determine the extent of the damage. Nevertheless, a high-ranking official of the provisional administration suggested that preliminary reports show a total loss of 30 million Br.

The most severely damaged were the Dire Dawa branch of the Transport Authority and the Ethio-Djibouti Railway Enterprise, resulting in the termination of transport services for the whole week. The central bus stop, located in the central part of the city, was hit strong, causing the destruction of three buses, one motorbike and a Toyota vehicle. All its documents were washed away, although the Authority was trying to restore services from Feres Megala, the now abandoned bus station of the town, according to Girma Ayalew, head of Administration and Services.

Last week, employees of the Authority dried files in the sun and cleaned out sand from the office floor.

The power of the flood could well be illustrated with a train wagon overturned in the Hurso area, four kilometers from Dire Dawa; the floods that came through Dengego swamped the rise of the tracks so that the train wheels skipped off the railway tracks resulting in it being overturned and spilling the contents of the carriages, molasses being transported from the Metehara Sugar factory.

Ethiopian sugar factories have been using the single railway line for the past 30 years, sending up to 800tn molasses to the Port of Djibouti every month. It was the first time a torrent struck a train loaded with 63tn of molasses, that was lost when the carriages overturned: two carriages received major damage and the third was spared with only minor ones.

The loss was estimated to be worth 5,400 dollars, according to Habtamu Regassa, head of Export Department at the Ethiopian Sugar Industries Support Center, a centralized federal agency responsible for the marketing and procurement of all the sugar factories in Ethiopia.

The tragedy halted cargo transportation service altogether: three trains carrying 6,000tn of corn were stopped at Yerer. They were to deliver part of the 30,000tn the Grain Trade Enterprise is supplying to the Ogaden area. According to sources, 10 trucks were awaiting them at Dire Dawa.

Read More: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3