Flooding Divides Paoua Town In Central Africa Republic, Following Torrential Rains
The flood has made administrative and commercial activities almost impossible, as the town is now separated from one end of another while locals await aid.
Paoua town in the northwest of the Central African Republic has since Sunday, August 21, 2022, been cut in two after torrential rains led to flash floods that swept away the bridge linking the two sections of the town which is the chief town of the Lim-Pende about 485 km to the northwest of Bangui, the capital.
“The town is now divided into two: to the north is the administrative centre and to the south is the commercial centre,” a resident told HumAngle.
Residents must devise various means to cross the town’s Vouh river to access the market or the administrative centre as the Paoua bridge remains missing.
Vehicles cannot move from one part of the divided town to the other, and some vehicles from Bozoum now have to pass through the Paoua high school, where there is a small wooden bridge to get to the western part of the town.
Heavy-duty trucks that the wooden bridge cannot support have preferred to park and wait until when a new bridge is constructed over the Vouh river.
Humanitarian trucks from Bangui prefer passing through the Bossangoa highway instead of Bozoum. The curtailment in mobility has seriously affected commercial activities in Paoua due to the difficult access to the town.
Paoua town, not far from the border with Chad, was only last year raised to the divisional headquarter of Lim-Pende by a decree signed by President Faustin Archange Touadera.
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