Floods in Namibia

In January and February, 2008, heavy and long lasting rainfall led to partially serious flooding in northern Namibia and southern Angola. Many rivers and wadis were deeply inundated with water, which has caused serious damages to infrastructure and housing and forced thousands of people to leave their homes. The contamination of the water caused by the submerging of pit latrines and the sewerage system led to an outbreak of cholera which caused the Namibian government to declare a state of emergency. Continuing rainfall was expected for the following days. On March 14, 2008, UN-OOSA triggered the International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters' on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme UN DP. Relying on data of DLR's high-resolution radar satellite TerraSAR-X, the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) at DLR produced maps of the affected region as support to the ongoing Charter Call which was managed by ESA with UNOSAT as Value Adding provider.