Heavy rains render families homeless, destroys school in Mzimba

Several families have been left homeless in some areas of Traditional Authority Kampingo Sibande in Mzimba district after heavy rains destroyed their houses on Wednesday.

In the same area, classes were suspended on Wednesday at Enyezini community day secondary school as the rainstorm destroyed classroom blocks at the institution.

Traditional Authority Kampingo Sibande of the area confirmed the tragedy and urged well wishes to help the victims.

A visit by Malawi24 to the area found that some of the families had to seek shelter in churches for safety but they had no food and other basic necessities.

“We are waiting for well-wishers to help us. The rains have left us homeless and hungry,” said one of the victims.

At the school, all classes have had their roofs blown away by the heavy rains which were accompanied by a heavy storm.

As if that was not enough, some teaching and learning resources were also destroyed by the rainstorm, a situation which forced teachers to suspend classes.

In an interview, headteacher for the school Solister Gondwe said they were not sure on when to resume classes as most resources were affected.

“Even teaching and learning books have been damaged so we can’t resume classes now. In fact we have no classes to conduct lessons,” he said.

Authorities from Mzimba district council were on the ground the same day conducting disaster assessment.

Earlier this year, heavy rains also left thousands of people homeless in Mzuzu where floods swept away a lot of houses.

Meanwhile, some environmental experts have projected on the recurrence of such tragedies owing to climate change.