Human activities cause of Accra floods – Amamoo-Okyere

The activities of people have been identified by Prof Emmanuel Amamoo-Okyere, a former Executive Director of the Centre for Geographical Information Service (GIS) at the University of Ghana, as the main cause of flooding in Accra in recent times.

The capital was hit with yet another deluge on Thursday, June 9, 2016, after four hours of rainfall left most suburbs submerged and inaccessible, prompting the military and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to come to the rescue of people and property. This came at about the same time last year, June 3, 2015, when close to 160 people died in a similar inundation in the city, most of them charred to death from an explosion at a GOIL fuel station they had gone to seek shelter from the rain. Water had seeped into the station’s underground tanks, displacing the fuel, which ignited after a spark from a generator in a neighbouring house.

But according to Prof Amamoo-Okyere, the increased urbanisation of Accra, a low-lying metropolis, which has seen it sprawling into far-off settlements as Dodowa, Nsawam, Kasoa, Aburi, was a factor. He explained that such expansion had been accomplished with the felling of trees to make way for new structures to accommodate the city’s rising population.

Trees, he said, collect excess rainwater and store it in the soil as “sub-surface water”, significantly preventing flooding. However, he explained that the large-scale cutting down of trees to allow for new developments had led to “creation of ‘dams’” in Accra as possibilities for percolation of excess water became limited.

“Because we have cut down all the trees, we are destroying the capacity to add to the underground storage of water. All these add to the anthropogenic factors,” he lamented on Ghana Yensom, Accra100.5FM’s morning show on Wednesday June 15.

The former geography lecturer said the situation had led to extremes of the weather and its elements – strong winds, drought, etc. – which affected food production and causing a rise in their prices.