The village of Guara Guara in central Mozambique was born eight years ago by survivors of killer floods, an increasingly regular feature that continues to swell its population.

Having welcomed more newcomers just last month, the sound of hammers and children's laughter resound around the village of 2000 inhabitants that resembles a vast building site and a refugee camp at the same time.

White tents are dotted among tarpaulin-covered reed huts and partially constructed brick houses as community members move through the different stages of starting a new life in the village erected on public land.

"With the flooding, our house fell. We left," recounts 25-year-old Jose Mulota who arrived in January with nearly 1700 others in boats and 4X4's supplied by the government and humanitarian agencies.

With his two wives and five children, the young peasant formerly lived in Buzi, 17 kilometres away, where he grew crops on the fertile banks of the river by the same name.

Now he waits, in his tent, for the right moment to sow his seeds and start again in Guara Guara, which is expected to eventually accommodate some 6000 people.

Near the port of Beira, the capital of Mozambique's central Sofala province, Buzi is surrounded by the river and marshes where rice paddies abound, and is frequently under water.

Its more than 17 000 hectares are easily flooded, with some 37 500 people under various degrees of threat from rising waters.

Criticised for a lack of preparedness for the 2000 floods that claimed about 700 lives, Mozambican authorities have embarked on the large-scale evacuation of areas at risk.

"We move families to safety on higher grounds," said Luis Pacheco, deputy head of Sofala's National Institute of Disaster Management.

"The government gives each family 50 square metres of land and pays for building materials and craftsmen. People manufacture their own bricks."

"For some, it is difficult: they balk at having to leave their land, the burial grounds of their dead," he says, admitting that "the sanitary arrangements are sometimes bad in the camps where, in the urgency, we do not have time to build enough latrines."

On the whole, 1429 families in Sofala have already been relocated this year. Last year, 6184 were moved and 1000 new homes built. Some 6000 are expected to be relocated in 2008.

The evacuation programme complements a new early warning system for floods and cyclones from the Indian Ocean. Financed by Germany with two million dollars, the system was put in place last year with the assistance of Central American experts.

Surveillance stations, equipped with radios, were installed along rivers, of which the Buzi river basin has eight from the mountains of the Zimbabwean border to Beira.

"Five times a day, each one records the water level, then transmits information downstream. A flood takes 24 hours to reach Buzi. That leaves us enough time to evacuate," said Pacheco.

To raise the alarm, villages were given flags (blue, yellow or red according to the level of danger), solar-powered radios, whistles and drums.

Since the beginning of the rainy season in December, an estimated 100 000 Mozambicans have had to be relocated countrywide.

The most recent floods were directly responsible for the deaths of 10 people, with another 70 dying from intestinal diseases caused by a lack of access to clean water.

In Buzi, no one died, but the red flag was hoisted three times and 4370 hectares of crops were lost.

"Until 2000, we had a flood every five to ten years, then every two years. Now, it is at least twice a year," said district administrator Sergio Moiane, blaming climate change, the overpopulation of river banks and erosion caused by deforestation.

"Our alarm system, it is the secret to avoiding deaths. It does not prevent the rains."

AFP