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70,000 Gaza Tents Flooded as First Winter Storm Hits CampsWorld
The first winter storm of the season has left tens of thousands of displaced families without dry shelter in Gaza, with emergency crews overwhelmed and aid groups warning that far worse weather is still to come.
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Heavy rain from the first winter storm of the season has flooded at least 70,000 tents sheltering displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, soaking bedding and belongings and forcing families out into the cold, local authorities said on Saturday, 7 November.
The storm began late on Friday night and gathered pace in the early hours of Saturday. Gaza’s Government Media Office said the flooding happened within about 12 hours and affected tens of thousands of people, causing injuries although no deaths had been reported. Gaza’s civil defence agency said its crews received about 1,500 distress calls in just 10 hours, with water levels in several shelter sites rising by 30 to 40 centimetres.
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“What we feared has actually happened,” Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera. “A few shelter centres were completely flooded, and everyone inside them has now been forced out into the unknown.” He warned that premature babies, the elderly and the sick were most at risk, saying those living in tents faced danger from cold and illness at any moment.
Families left in the cold
Footage from camps in Gaza City, Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah showed families wading through ankle-deep water, mattresses and blankets soaked, and children standing barefoot in pools of mud and sewage.
Olfat Magdoub, a Gaza resident, tried in vain to sweep water away from her tent. “This is the first day of rain, and of course we are already flooded. What will happen if it rains again the next day?” she said. She added that when it rained two weeks earlier, she spent four days sleeping on blankets spread on the floor because the rainwater had flooded the bedding.
In al-Mawasi, the coastal area where more than 900,000 displaced people are sheltering in southern Gaza, rain had been falling since 10pm on Friday. Al Jazeera’s Rami Abu Taima, reporting from Khan Younis, warned that more than 125,000 families living along the coast were at particular risk of having their tents swept away by the sea. Gaza’s emergency committee said more than one million displaced people face the dangers of winter, and that the territory urgently needs about 200,000 tents along with heating supplies.
Rescue teams overwhelmed
Municipal and civil defence officials said they were unable to cope with the storm because of fuel shortages and damage to equipment. Raed al-Dahshan, director of civil defence in Gaza governorate, told Al Jazeera: “Civil Defence does not have a single tarpaulin or a single tent. We deal only with saving lives, and that is not enough.” Gaza Municipality spokesman Hosni Muhanna said the city received 60 millimetres of rain in 12 hours, around 15 per cent of its annual rainfall.
Aid groups blame restrictions on the entry of shelter materials for the scale of the crisis. Mohammed Salha, director of the Palestinian NGO Network, told Al Jazeera that only 180 to 200 trucks were entering Gaza daily, far short of the 600 agreed under the humanitarian protocol of the ceasefire, and that only about 40 of those carried humanitarian aid. He said 50,000 tents had been waiting on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas blamed Israel for not allowing shelters and construction materials into Gaza, while COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, did not immediately comment on the accusations.
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