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Flash floods of differing magnitudes are not new to
Dire Dawa, a small city established as a result of a
railway passing through it over 100 years ago. It is
what its residents worry about almost every year
during the period of heavy monsoon rains. The night
of August 6 was different; the rain poured heavily
for three hours, beginning at 3:00am.
A year after that fateful night, Assia was still in
one of the few shelters scattered inside a youth
recreation centre near the Dire Dawa International
Airport when Fortune’s team tracked her down
last week. It seemed unusual for her to be looked
for by someone for she ran like an athlete eager to
know who might have been in search for her. Her
first reaction at the look of her photograph
published on this newspaper the week the disastrous
happened was rather unexpected. She instantly turned
her face away from the picture, in shock. It
reminded her of the worst night of her life, and
begun to cry.
Assia recalled being in deep sleep when the flood
broke off its course from Dechatu bank and
hit the house where she had lived for eight years,
with her aunt, Amina Ibrahim, and four of her
cousins, in a neighbourhood popularly known as
Behre Tsgie. Woken in confusion, all found
themselves engulfed in the high speed water. Assia
and her two cousins struggled, frantically, to grab
anything while being pushed away by the flood. Her
aunt and two of her other cousins were not as lucky.
When Fortune’s photographer, Kalkidan
Mehiretu, took a picture of her that later on was
rated by readers as one of the three best pictures
of the year, she was inside Dil Chora
Hospital, searching for the remains of her aunt and
cousins. It was two days after the incident.
Assia had given up tirelessly searching for them as
it was not easy to spot some of the bodies for the
flood had taken hundreds as far as Shinele, 30Km
from Dire Dawa. Neither was being around the
premises of the hospital a pleasant scene; it was
difficult to stand for a second in front of hundreds
of the victims due to a bad smell. Assia did not
appear to have minded it, for she was heartbroken
and consumed with deep regret that she could not see
their remains receive decent burial.
Understandably, she was only one of the thousands
grieving that day. A year after an incident she
described as the worst experience of her life, she
was not thriving as the city is, though it seems
struggling to move on from its losses as the scars
of the disastrous flood are still evident on its
roads under reconstruction.
Rebuilding is everywhere; in fact that is what
visitors driving to Dire Dawa first observe when
descending the steep hills of Dengego.
Construction workers were busy digging trenches to
bury concrete three metres deep, and bulldozers were
at work widening the banks to reduce the intensity
of the flood whenever it comes on the town. The
latest was three days before Fortune’s team
arrived at the scene on Monday, August 13.
Inside the city, there are high stone walls
alongside the Dechatu riverbed being erected
and hundreds of houses under construction in order
to resettle survivors of the flood.
Sewasew Daniel, 24, is one of the 300 survivors who
have been given one of these newly built houses. She
had lost her husband and son to the flood.
Her story of survival is profound.
Sewasew lived with her five-year-old son she had
with her late husband, Tesfaye Hailemichael, a
second-hand car dealer she married after quitting
school during the eighth grade. The night of August
6, changed everything in her life.
“When I heard shouting in our neighbourhood, I woke
up my husband,” Sewasew remembers the fateful night
as if it was just yesterday. “Before we realised
what was going on, we were taken away by the massive
flood.”
Sewasew and her late husband saw a terrifying scene
of houses crumbled within minutes. Tesfaye quickly
grabbed their son, and helped her climb on the roof
of their house. They did not stay long there. When
Tesfaye saw the intensity of the flood, he decided
to runaway with his family. He and their son did not
make it, though.
“After he jumped into the flood, he asked me to give
him our son,” Sewasew told Fortune. “I handed
my son over to him, and tried to look strong to grab
him before I jumped into the water. I turned my face
to the place where Tesfaye was. Both were not
there.”
Sewasew spent the following two hours on the roof -
cold, scared and undecided on what to do. She was
anxious about the whereabouts of her husband and
son. Her hope was alive when she began searching for
them as early as the first ray of light on the sky.
Her effort to find her loved ones was shattered when
she went to Dil Chora morgue to face the
bitter truth.
She could not believe her eyes when she saw the
remains of her husband lying among hundreds of
others. A year after the loss of her husband,
Sewasew broke into tears last week, recalling how
she had buried him the same day she found his
remains. It was evident that her anguish is too deep
to heal anytime soon for she could not find her
son’s remains even after four consecutive days of
searching. Her inability to bury her son haunts her
to date, as her sorrow is evident in her expression
clad with a black outfit that she wore when
Fortune’s team met her last week.
Unlike many survivors, Sewasew was lucky to have her
mother, a brother and three sisters beside her. Her
family, who also lives in Dire Dawa, sent her to
Addis Abeba, hoping she would find peace of mind
from spiritual treatment with “holy water”. The
support from her family was one that soothed Sewasew
to recover from her trauma; she is also grateful to
the authorities at the Dire Dawa City
Administration.
Many of the survivors were sheltered in schools,
where authorities registered their names as victims.
Nevertheless, these names were consolidated without
further investigation when the victims transferred
to temporary shelters inside the 10hct youth
recreation site, where they remained for the
following seven months, provided with daily rations
of 15Kg of rice and a half litre of edible oil per
head. The monthly food ration and allocation of
houses is part of the City Administration’s effort
to rehabilitate the flood survivors.
Those like Sewasew who were not in the shelters,
were beneficiaries of the rations and enlisted to be
relocated into the houses built by the City
Administration and other donors such as Ayat Real
Estate Company.
Sewasew was one of the first victims to get a
single-room house constructed in Chigegn Tabia
area, one of four sites the Administration selected
to construct 735 houses on three months’ timetable.
A year after the flood, the City Administration
could only complete 300 houses, of which 180 of them
are found in Chigegn Tabia. All of these
houses are single rooms, although they have their
own toilets. They lack a kitchen, and are yet to be
provided with electricity as well as running water
in some of the houses. |
