Reps Circular

Dear ALMA Reps and Friends

This is being an extremely hard Lent in Mozambique. Many of you have been following news of the floods and cyclone Favio (see NEWS section) and responding to the ALMA Crisis Appeal launched on Ash Wednesday by Bishop Michael. Last week brought flooding of coastal areas and an explosion in the armoury in Maputo. Details of these are below along with a letter - just arrived - from Bishop Dinis on the situation. I am sure you will want to share this with your churches on Sunday.

With all good wishes,
Sheenagh.

1) High Tides flood Coastal Areas - is it Global Warming?

Unprecedented flooding of low lying coastal areas this past week was caused by global warming according to some Mozambican officials.

High spring tides were stronger this year because of the alignment of the sun, moon, and earth (which also caused the eclipse), flooding low lying neighbourhoods all along the coast last week. But there are suggestions that the flooding was worse than in the past because of rising sea levels caused by global warming.

2) Maputo Armoury explosion; more than 100 dead

An explosion Thursday afternoon (22nd) at an arms store in Maputo spread shells and rockets over a large area of Maputo, killed over 100 people, and destroyed or damaged hundreds of buildings.

The armoury is in a densely populated area 10 km from the downtown (“baixa”) of Maputo. It is just beyond the end of the airport runway, and the airport was closed until mid-day Friday. The armoury contains munitions more than 20 years old and increasingly unstable, and questions are being asked about why it was allowed to remain in middle of a city.

Officially there are 93 dead and nearly 400 injured, but the number killed will surely go over 100 as many bodies have not yet been recovered. STV showed people digging bodies out the rubble by hand.

The fire appears to have begun around 1600 Thursday, leading to a major explosion at 1700 which hurled mortar shells, rockets and other explosives over a wide area. Many remain in building and strewn over roads, but some exploded, causing many of the deaths and injuries. The Infulene Psychiatric hospital was severely damaged when three rockets slammed into it. The Infulene electricity sub-station was hit, cutting power to most of southern Mozambique. The blast broke windows and damaged buildings in the “cement city” in the baixa and on Av 24 de Julho. Explosions and fire continued until nearly midnight.

(See the location of the armoury from Google Maps. It is the 2 km x 2 km green area in the centre, and the end of the airport runway is 2 km below it.)

3) Mozambique in Disasters from Bishop Dinis

Read Bishop Dinis’ letter here.