Pregnant Woman n 8 Others Drowned In Flood

The deceased were on their way to the community when the storm met and threw them into the water.

According to report, eight persons, including a pregnant woman, and seven children, have drowned in the ravaging flood at Utchi in Ndokwa East Local Government Area of Delta State.

Chairman of Ndokwa East Local Government council, Mrs. Nkechi Chukwura, disclosed this yesterday in an interaction with newsmen, shortly after a stakeholders meeting on Improving Synergy on Management of the 2015 Predicted Flood at Asaba, the State capital. 

She said……..

‘’The pregnant woman and the children are nowhere to be found but they later found a little child along the river bank of one of the communities. The seven children were not all her children, I think they were coming from the school, so they all died,’’ he said. 

Meanwhile, the state government has solicited the support of traditional rulers and community leaders in the management of the flood which, it said, was already ravaging about 15 of the 25 local government areas in the state.

State Deputy Governor, Mr. Kingsley Otuaro, who was responding to complaints by some of the traditional rulers and community leaders at the stakeholders, stressed the need for effective collaboration between the state government and the leaders of the affected community.

He lamented that some of the victims of the flood impacted communities had primordial attachment to their homes and had refused to move, thereby making it difficult for the government to effectively address the challenge.

Speaking on efforts by the state government to ameliorate the suffering of the flood victims, Otuaro disclosed that the government had set plans in motion to establish Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs. camps in Burutu Local Government Area where the flood was already at a high level.

He said the government also had plans to convey relief materials to the people in the best possible means they could be reached, noting that government was doing its best  to sensitise the public against building structures on natural water ways.