Flood kills family of 6 as bridge connecting 7 towns collapses in Anambra

Six members of a family in Nzam community, Anambra West Local Government Area of Anambra State have died in the flood which besieged the area.

Sources said the deceased had prepared to leave their houses to a safer place before the flood surged into their homes and, unfortunately, they got drowned.

In a trending video, some youths were seen bringing out the dead bodies and lining them up in an upland area of the town. A bridge said to be linking seven communities in Ogbaru local government area collapsed as a result of the flood ravaging almost all the communities in that LGA.

The affected communities are Umunankwo, Mputu, Ogwuaniocha, Ossomala, Obeagwe, Akili Ogidi and Ogwuikpele.

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The Anam tragedy is coming not long after some people were reported missing after a boat carrying over 40 people capsised in Umunankwo community, Ogbaru LGA. A man was also said to have drowned in his sleep when flood submerged his home in the same LGA.

Also, a three-storey church building belonging to Madonna Catholic Parish in the Iyiowa area of Odekpe, in the same LGA, collapsed in the morning of last Sunday. The church compound was said to have been flooded.

Former President General of Umuzu community in the same LGA, Chukwudum Ndedigwe, told Daily Sun that there was no casualty in the building collapse. He said the flooding, which has been ravaging many communities in that LGA, also affected the church building.

It was gathered that a security man, who was around the three-storey building, was injured when the building collapsed, and was immediately rushed to the hospital where he was given treatment.

An indigene of the area lamented that no government official had been to the place to assess the level of damage caused by the floodwater, apart from the Transition Committee chairman of that LGA, Mr Pascal Anaegbunam.

“In fact, we have long been cut off, without anyone making any appreciable effort to assuage our pains.

This is the only road that connects all communities in Ogbaru, but surprisingly, it cut into two somewhere around Ofia Umuoga, between Ogbakuba and Umunankwo, about two weeks ago, only for our governor to visit Ogbaru and stopped at Odekpe, very far from the site of the collapse,” the indigene lamented.

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Meanwhile, the former member of the House of Representatives, Ogbaru Federal Constituency, Afam Ogene, has, again, called on the relevant authorities, including the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to reach out more to the people, with a view to providing their most pressing needs.

Ogene, who is the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) for the 2023 polls for the same position, said: “In fact, the string of calamities currently being experienced by my people of Ogbaru goes beyond palliatives and relief materials by SEMA and NEMA.