Mepe Flood 2023 – Eyewitness Stories, Impacts & Recovery

Mepe

In October 2023, the community of Mepe on the banks of the Volta was hit by a severe, day-lasting flood.The Akosombo Dam Spillage Flood, as it came to be named, inundated most parts of the town. It affected built structures and adjacent areas alike and has left traces in the residents‘ minds. Public life came to a standstill, schools were closed down and high school institutions served as temporary havens for flood refugees. Health issues ensued, food and freshwater supply was critical. Help was organized from within the community, and despite the catastrophic dimension of the flood, there were no casualties.

The primary reason for the flood was the deliberate, unsatisfactorily communicated opening of spilling gates upstream of Mepe; abundant rainfalls had filled the reservoirs behind Akosombo and other dams to their brims.

What happened | Impacts and affectedness | Coping and adaptation strategies | Future

What happened? Course of the events

Eye-witnesses report what happened. How the Volta river floods Mepe with a vigour that none of them had seen before. How they tried saving their belonings, abandoned their houses, fought with the water masses. How they coped with the situation in the crucial hours.

Mavis

Michael

“It was a disaster that nobody was expecting.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“We were not prepared for the flood.”

Juliana

“The water just came. We were not expecting anything like that.”

Footage from the flood

This video provides a striking impression of the force of the flood. It shows how a house collapses under the pressure of the water masses while Amos describes what happened at the time. The images capture the moment of destruction and illustrate the scale of the event.

Interview with Amos

“It was the 11^th of October, when it crossed the main road. We realized it crossing and just in 10 minutes it reaches here.

The altitude was very, very high to the standard, I was on a knee-level trying to save some of my properties.

When we realized, the buildings just started to come down. Even my friend was here to assist me, so that we could disconnect the powers, the electric power.”

-Amos

Holy Christ Students

“When I went to school, they were saying that the spillage will come to the town but it won’t be that much.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“We had a short notice that they had already opened the gates at Akosombo Dam… By the time we realized, it had already taken the town.”

James

“When the flood began, initially we thought it would just pass by. After an hour the electricity company came, removed all our meters, and told us to pack our belongings.”

“If you want to move from our school, Kizito, to the road side you have to join the boats. The same applies to the eastern side, that also got flooded, before you get to town, you have to join the boats, and the water surrounded the whole of this place.”

-Mavis

Mavis

“We came back to open the school for those left homeless by the flood.”

James

“The flood lasted for 18 days.”

After the flood: Impacts and affectedness

The aftermath of the flood began with an inspection of the damages and a counting of losses: houses had been uninhabitable for weeks, livelihoods were destroyed, health was affected, help reached the people, or it did not. Everyday life was no longer the same, it left deep traces in the built as well as in the individuals‘ and social structures.

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Everyday life

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“After the flood our schools were shut down for more than three months.”

Pearl

Gloria

“Now we must buy everything we used to produce ourselves.”

Livelihoods

Pearl

“School reopened in December but attendance was poor; many pupils never returned.”

Pythias

“As a leader people look up to you; without work it’s very difficult.”

Juliana

“Everything was flooded and muddy — we couldn’t sell for a month.”

Gloria

“Our farms were destroyed; now we tie ropes to sell and buy food.”

Damages and destruction

Mavis

“We’re still struggling with furniture and dining space issues.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Health and well-being

Mavis

“We’re still lacking toilets; students defecate in the bushes, which is no good for our health.”

Holy Christ Students

“They built us a new clinic.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Michael

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“People lost their money; paying for health care was difficult.”

James

“We were very upset and traumatized in every aspect.”

„Presently, we‘re struggling with toilet facility issues. We had always been hoping and appealing to NGOs and the government to come to our aid, beause when the students come to school now, it is always difficult. They defecate in the bushes around, which is no good for our health, and that can bring about any disease outbreak.“

-Mavis, Saint Kizito Senior Technical High School

How to deal? Coping and adaptation strategies

The flood cannot be undone, but there are lessons to be learned.
Community members found ways to cope, and new forms of adaptation became essential.
Some coping strategies emerged during the disaster; others developed afterwards through improved disaster management and stronger flood protection measures.

Help and support

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“I called GTV to cover the situation and bring attention to us.”

Holy Christ Students

“We got help from UNICEF.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Criticsm

Gloria

“In the villages there was no communal support anymore.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“Government and NADMO promised help - but they never delivered their promises.”

Gloria

“We across the river got no support; aid went only to the town.”

Pearl

“Government built houses; brick homes were destroyed, block ones survived.”

Amos

“No government support — only private help from friends and relatives.”

Juliana

“The government didn’t help; the president said we didn’t vote for him.”

Amos

“This is a national disaster. We were expecting that the president tells us something that takes away a bit the psycological effects.”

Solidarity

Mavis

“We turned classrooms into shelters; students sacrificed their space.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“We borrowed boats to move people to safety.”

Mavis

“Boatmen charged small tokens — it became a business.”

James

“You had to pay to cross the river by boat.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“We spent four days with no sleep in the water helping our people out of danger. Moving them to a higher ground”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Juliana

“We had help from friends and the Mepe Development Association. They brought us some food items like rice, corn and maize.”

Coping strategies / Sites of Memory

Mavis

“Afterwards we reflected — students and teachers were all affected.”

Pearl

"All of the children have experienced the same thing, so they have that kind of feeling and they were always talking about it. But they were always saying they wish it will not happen again. And that is our prayer“

Mavis

Pearl

“Pupils came without books, just talking about the flood.”

Mavis

“We asked VRA to build a monument as a reminder.”

Pearl

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

“After the flood we prayed to our ancestors to calm the river spirit.”

James

“I am very much interested in history. I always want to have my history at hand. I marked the flood level on my wall to keep the memory.”

Torgbe Kosi Nego VI

Why, and where to? Disaster reasons and reasoning

Looking ahead means looking back in order to identify the causes for what the community had to endure. While the flood seemed to be a natural phenomenon, the reasons for the catastrophe were also man-made: human failure and unpreparedness are co-responsible for the disaster‘s dimension. Naming the reasons for the flood strongly depends on the witnesses‘ inidividual perpective.

Looking ahead includes a thorough and honest analysis – was it just ‚nature‘, and what role does climate change play? How man-made is climate change?. It comprises the formulation of what must be done to prevent, or at least mitigate, similar events in the future.

Reason finding

Mavis

“When you entered the campus, you saw a billboard indicating safe haven: when, in the case of disaster, this is the only safe place. So there are simulations, quite one or two of them, but we didn‘t know ...
– Who had them put there?”

Mavis

“I could not be in the position to talk about that, but just hearsay: the level of the water was rising, there was much rains from Bagre Dam, the water level at Akosombo and then Akuse was rising and opened the gates by itself because it went beyond its level, and then that brought us into that devastating situation.”

Pearl