User:KaMinden/sandbox

Background and details of the disaster
The 2019–2020 Congo River floods resulted from torrential rains over the Congo Rive r from October 2019 to January 2020 that caused the overflow of the Congo river and Ubangi river, floods and landslides throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Republic of Congo (RoC) and led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Heavy rains affected 16 of the 26 provinces of the DRC and eight out of 12 departments of RoC. The most affected provinces in DRC were Nord-Ubangi, Sud-Ubangi, Mongala, Equateur, and Tshopo, and the most affected in RoC were Likouala, Cuvette, Plateaux and Brazzaville.

Several hundreds of villages were affected, many of them being completely flooded leading to the damage or complete distruction of many houses in the affected areas. The Flooding led to a severe damage of infrastructure and blocked access to water, food, schools and health care. Due to the flood, home, schools and health centers were only accessible by boat in the affected areas and significant crop and livestock losses happened.

The flood was a 1-in-50-year occurrence. By December 2019, the Congo river carried 70 000 cubic meters of water per second past Kinshasa, DRC and delivered vast quantities of sand and mud. The floods and a following landslide from November 2019 killed more than 41 people in the Kinshasa City area. More than 400 000 people were displaced out of at least 923,000 affected in the Democratic Republic of Congo and several hundred houses were flooded in the Kinshasa District. Those affected suffered of severe deprivation due to the flood such as loosing their homes and property, livelihoods, crops and agricultural land. The displaced population were relocated into other homes, makeshift shelters and public places such as schools.