Three people, including an 86-year-old man, were killed by floods following hours of torrential rains which hit Sandema in the Upper East Region over the weekend. The 86-year-old man, who hailed from the village of Wiaga, has been identified only as Aborube, while the others, both females, were yet to be identified. In a tragic reversal of the harsh conditions which had threatened agriculture in the northern part of the country a few months ago, the raging floods also displaced hundreds of residents, damaged houses and submerged farms in Sandema and its surrounding villages. The downpour, which lasted many hours from Friday at dawn into the early hours of Saturday, affected mostly occupants of mud and thatched houses and recorded 112 millimetres of rain, the highest in recent times. The victims were putting up with family and friends while awaiting relief items from the appropriate agencies. At Sandema a warehouse containing 400 bags of sorghum worth GH¢16,000 was destroyed while a truck loaded with assorted alcoholic drinks got stuck in the flood after it had veered off the road. According to the Daily Graphic, a major bridge linking Ghana and Burkina Faso at Kulungungu in the Bawku municipality was badly damaged as a result of the strong currents, rendering most passengers and vehicles stranded at each side of the bridge. That has cut off transportation links between Ghana and its neighbouring Sahelian countries, compelling users of the major trans-ECOWAS highway to reroute their journey through Togo into the country at Polimakom. Other parts of the region affected by the rains were Kobore, Sapelliga, Binaba, Piiga, Zongoyire and Tanga, all in the Bawku West District, where farmlands were completely submerged. In the Kassena-Nankana District, communities such as Doba, Nayagenia and Kandiga also had their groundnuts and millet farms totally destroyed. The embankment of the main road leading to Sandema which was recently constructed by Messrs Bozo Construction Limited, was also washed off while a number of people had been marooned by the floods. The Deputy Upper East regional minister, Mrs Agnes Asangalisa Chigabatia, accompanied by the Regional Co-ordinator of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Mr Anderson Anafo-Nabila, and the Regional Director of the Department of Women of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs, Madam Paulina Abayage, have visited the affected areas to assess the extent of damage. Mrs Chigabatia empathised with the affected families and gave the assurance that the government would do everything possible to assist in alleviating their suffering. She appealed to the government to declare the affected areas a disaster zone in order to deploy all the necessary logistics to the area. After the tour, the District Chief Executive for Builsa, Mr Thomas Kofi Alonsi, who could not readily provide figures of the exact number of persons affected, told the Daily Graphic that a number of registration centres had been opened in the various communities to collate the total number of persons displaced. He added that two separate camps had been created at the Sandema Preparatory School and the Youth Leadership Institute to accommodate victims of the disaster, the second in less than six months. The Daily Graphic said a total of 353 people had been already been registered at the Sandema Community Centre. "We anticipate that the assembly alone cannot meet the demand that will be made on us and certainly, we look forward to central government stepping in to assist us," Mr Alonsi pleaded. He also called on philanthropic agencies to come to the aid of the disaster victims. The Regional Co-ordinator of NADMO had indicated that his outfit had no immediate relief items to distribute to the victims. He, therefore, appealed to the NADMO headquarters in Accra to quickly dispatch relief items such as blankets and tents to the area to alleviate the suffering of the people.