How floods ravaged Umuaka town in one night.
2 min read
From the night of Tuesday 3rd October 2023 and Wednesday morning October 4, Umuaka community witnessed what has never been seen or heard of in the community in the last 200 years and beyond. According to eyewitnesses who spoke with Umuaka Times correspondents in the community, trouble started around 11 pm on Tuesday October 3 when many had already gone to bed and within some minutes later, it started to rain heavily. The rain which many saw as a blessing to fine-tune their sound sleep continued to rain till the late hours of the following day.
The rain simply refused to stop!
Around 1 am or thereabout, some people in Umuezikeukwu, Umuezeala and Obinwanne started to notice unusual sounds around their houses and also found out that their compounds had been flooded and the flood had found its way to their living rooms, bedrooms and more. An emergency has just begun. From Obinwanne to Uba and some parts of Umuele, residents had to wake up from their sleep in order to seek for solutions on how to manage the emergency situation and stay safe.
Hours later, the night faded into day and people woke up from their slumbers. Immediately, wailings and lamentations took over. It was discovered that goods and personal properties worth millions of naira were all destroyed by the flood. In Obinwanne, a little child of just few months old miraculously escaped death; few minutes the mother of the baby took him away from a house hitherto considered safe, the house just collapsed. In all, three houses collapsed as a result of the flood.
After the destructions had been noted in the affected villages, Umuaka Times newspaper made a documentary of the whole affected villages and appealed to the stakeholders in the state to come to the aid of the victims of the flood. On Friday 6 October 2023, the Imo House of Assembly member representing Njaba LGA, Hon Ozioma Worship and the Sole Administrator of Njaba Local Government Area, Chief Vitals Obi, paid an official visit to Umuaka to assess the extent of damage caused by the flood. According to Hon Chief Julius Egewusi (JP), an APC chieftain in Umuaka, the two top government officials promised to rebuild the house of Mr Athan Duru and Mr Innocent Bekee. They are the two men from Uba whose houses collapsed during the heavy downpour. There was also an orphan from Uba who received assistance from the state actors that visited.
Umuaka Times later realized that the official visit by the two state actors did not get to Obinwanne and Umuele communities, the two communities that were also affected. For now the government officials have visited the affected villages in Njaba LGA and made their promises for an intervention. It is only time that will tell when the promise would be fully fulfilled by the government.
