Authorities in Chad declared a state of emergency after floodwaters swamped entire neighborhoods in the African country’s capital city of N’Djamena. The city has been dealing with intense rainfall for months due to an unusually active wet season. In October, torrential rains pushed the already high Logone and Chari Rivers beyond their banks. This sent large amounts of water spilling into N’Djamena’s 9th District, especially the Digangali and Walia neighborhoods.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this natural-color image of the flooding on October 23, 2022. Houses and other buildings appear as small white and gray dots. On October 20, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that one-quarter of the city was underwater and more than 50,000 people had been forced from their homes. Some areas were only accessible by boat, according to Reuters.
The flooding in Chad is not limited to N’Djamena. Eighteen of the country’s 23 provinces were flooded in October, according to authorities in Chad. More than 465,000 hectares (1,800 square miles) of farmland were underwater and more than 19,000 cattle have been swept away nationwide. The neighboring countries of Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Nigeria were all dealing with serious flooding in recent weeks as well.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.
