Three years ago, on a November night, Sabrin Ahmed, living with her three children in the village of Al-Aqap in Aswan Governorate, was surprised by fierce winds uprooting everything in their path. The winds tore off the tin sheets covering the roof of her house, built from mountain stones. Then, the rain poured down harshly on her family’s heads, flooding their simple furniture, forcing them to flee before the floodwaters cascaded down the mountain towards the village near the flood pathways, threatening their lives.
A few months later, the family managed to build a new stone house in Al-Aqap village, with help from volunteers and charitable organizations. Although the new house was not built near the flood path, its roof made of palm fronds left it vulnerable to the recent climatic changes in Aswan and other southern parts of Egypt. Last Friday, Sabrin and her children were caught off guard by heavy rains in their village. The fragile roof couldn’t withstand the downpour, allowing the rain to seep into the house, causing damage to some furniture. But the tragedy didn’t stop there; floods rushed down from the mountain towards their village, the electricity was cut off, and the village was submerged in water in the darkness, Sabrin told Zawia3.
Sabrin said: “We were surprised by the floods in the summer, and fortunately, they weren’t as strong as they were three years ago. This year’s losses included damage to our home’s furniture and to some other villagers’ belongings due to the rain. A roof and part of a wall of our neighbors’ house collapsed, injuring two of their family members. Since our village lacks a sewage system, the streets were flooded with water, the electricity transformer burned out, and the power was out for about 12 hours. Drinking water was also cut off for several difficult hours. I hope the governorate finds a solution to protect our village from floods.”
The poorest families in Aswan who have no shelter often resort to breaking stones from mountainous areas, which are rich in sandstone quarries, and building small houses with mud or cement, using palm fronds for roofs that offer little protection from the winter cold or summer heat. Heavy rains quickly destroy these roofs, and strong winds easily topple them. Sometimes, these families receive tin roofs from charitable organizations.
These extremely simple and fragile houses are scattered across East and West Aswan. Some are built within mountainous areas, while others are near or within flood paths, making them highly susceptible to destruction during heavy rains and floods. Rains pour heavily on the mountains, pushing down and destroying the homes in their path. This has happened repeatedly in 1996, 2010, 2021, and this year in the last few days. Civil society organizations, charitable associations, and volunteers in relief work are still trying to assess the damage, according to Mohamed Ali Tabarak, a civil society coordinator and lecturer at 6th of October University, who resides in Aswan, speaking to Zawia3.
The civil society coordinator in Aswan says: “Due to the recent floods in East and West Aswan, in areas like Al-Kobaneya, Kima, Abu Rish, Al-Aqap, and the High Dam, there was total and partial damage to several stone-built homes. The damage varied between roof collapses, partial collapse of stone walls, or sections falling off due to water saturation. Many poor families were forced to leave their homes and sleep outdoors for fear of water-soaked roofs or walls collapsing on their heads.”
Tabarak reveals that charitable organizations and volunteers set up an operations room on Thursday, August 8, to assess the damage, provide hot meals to affected families, and collect donations and aid to repair the damage to homes.
This happened – as he describes – in the absence of government officials and the governorate. He points out that during the floods in Aswan in 2021, around 130 charitable associations and civil society organizations collaborated with international institutions, quickly assessing the damage and providing relief efforts within hours of the flood, which was much stronger than this year and caused significant damage to several homes and the entire village of Benban, which now hosts the solar energy project. The officials only moved days after the flood occurred.
According to Aswan Governor Ismail Kamal, about 1.7 million cubic meters of rainwater flowed from valleys and natural flood paths, including one million cubic meters diverted through Al-Kasara flood path, 500,000 cubic meters through Wadi Abu Sabira Lake, and 200,000 cubic meters through the Al-Aqap dam, then through the artificial path until it reached the Nile River.
Floods have previously swept through several archaeological sites in the village of Dahmit in Kom Ombo Center in Aswan, on the western side of the Nile, in 1996, including the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Seti I Temple. The flood destroyed the wall of Horemheb’s tomb. A devastating flood in 2010 displaced over 2,000 families after more than 1,100 houses in ten villages were destroyed or damaged. In 2021, floods destroyed cemeteries in the Al-Shallal area south of Aswan, washing away bodies and remains, and resulted in the submersion of vehicles, the falling of trees, and the death of three citizens and injuries to 503 others from scorpion stings.
Housing Crisis
Aswan activist in service work, Hafsa Ambarak – a member of the Aswan Foundation and the General Nubian Union – explains that her governorate is divided into mountainous areas like West Aswan, Al-Shallal, Al-Kobaneya, and Abu Rish, where floodwaters accumulate, and urban areas with residential buildings. She notes that the damage to some homes and streets from this year’s floods was limited compared to 2021, mainly affecting the Abu Simbel tourist road and some parts of Al-Jozira, Al-Aqap, and Abu Rish villages, particularly those near flood paths. She reveals that Al-Jozira village suffered from a lack of sanitation services, forcing residents to throw waste into the flood path, leading to its blockage. This prevented the accumulation of heavy rainwater within it, causing it to reach some homes.
She adds, “We suffer from a severe housing crisis in Aswan due to the limited number of available housing units and the high prices for buying and renting them. This problem worsened after large numbers of Sudanese refugees fled to Aswan due to the war, with rental prices ranging from three thousand to 15 thousand Egyptian pounds per month, and the price of a housing unit starting at one million pounds in youth housing. Meanwhile, most workers in Aswan earn no more than three thousand pounds per month, forcing many young people who are about to get married and can’t find a place to live with their wives within their family homes to break mountain stones and build houses in the desert outskirts of their villages. The local authorities occasionally demolish these illegal houses, but the residents rebuild them again.”
The Aswan activist believes that the annual heavy rainfall season has not yet arrived and that more severe floods are expected than those that occurred in the first week of August. However, she thinks these sudden floods are an opportunity to alert local authorities to prepare flood paths as best as possible, remove encroachments on them, and clean out flood paths filled with waste. She explains that Aswan’s geographical nature, surrounded by mountains, makes it prone to floods, so preparations must be made to avoid significant losses in lives and property.
Deteriorating Infrastructure
It was past two in the afternoon when strong winds hit Al-Arbaeen village, located in the Paris Center of the New Valley Governorate, accompanied by heavy rains that quickly formed floods, flooding the village’s streets, which lack a sewage system, and rushing into the simple mud-brick houses, which are relatively lower than the asphalt streets. The floods damaged the residents’ furniture and belongings, causing erosion and collapse of walls and roofs in some houses, prompting the village elder to send an emergency appeal to the local unit to rescue the situation, according to young Mahmoud Mohamed, a resident of Al-Arbaeen village, speaking to Zawia3.
Mahmoud says, “Our house roofs are made of palm fronds, and they got holes through which the heavy rain leaked, wetting the bedding and clothes, damaging the furniture and mattresses, and burning the appliances. Some houses’ roofs and walls collapsed in front of the floods, and the wheat and cumin crops and the grain stock of the villagers were damaged. If we had drainage and a sewage system, this disaster wouldn’t have happened.” He explains that after some time, sewage trucks arrived in the village and drained the rainwater, dumping it in the mountainous area, and the local council, in cooperation with charities and the Red Crescent, provided food aid and mattresses to the villagers.
The local resident clarifies that his village is an urban area that was part of Mubarak’s National Graduates Project and has a health office, a hospital, and a school. Still, it lacks a sewage system and does not meet safety and security standards. The village still relies on diesel generators for electricity, which operate from 8 AM to 4 PM, then from 6 PM to 1 AM, with power outages during the remaining hours of the day.
He adds, “We only get drinking water for two or three hours every two days, despite having a water purification plant ready for operation in the neighboring village – which has not yet been operated.” He questions why none of the “Hayat Karima” projects have been implemented in their village, despite it being included in the program for three years, and the residents receiving promises to repair and rebuild the dilapidated homes of the poor.
MP Ahmed Al-Aqati – a member of Parliament for the New Valley – reveals to Zawia3 that heavy rain for two consecutive days caused cracks in the walls and roofs of some houses in the Paris Center, specifically in the villages of Al-Arbaeen, Aden, and Baghdad. This led to damage to families’ furniture and the burning of some electrical appliances due to rainwater leaks into their homes, especially since their roofs are made of palm fronds or tin. He added that both the governor and his deputy and a delegation from the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Red Crescent provided aid and relief materials to the affected families.
Al-Aqati confirms that the villages affected by the floods lack a sewage system and are already included in the “Hayat Karima” program. He noted that the governorate, in cooperation with social affairs, intends to grant compensation to the affected and rebuild some of the damaged houses in a safer way and consider how to operate the sewage system for these villages.
Road Collapses
Not only were fragile houses damaged by the recent floods; the floods that poured in Aswan in August also caused the drowning of a citizen named Ali Bekhit Mohamed, aged 42, on the Al-Alaki road east of Aswan. The rainwater caused cracks and flooding on some roads, the most significant of which was the Abu Simbel tourist road, which was recently repaired at a cost of 75 million pounds, causing a traffic crisis, with citizens stuck in their cars for hours amid the floodwaters. Anasif Nassar, who was riding a minibus with other passengers at kilometer 100 on the Abu Simbel-Aswan road when floodwaters submerged much of the minibus and seeped into it, leaving the passengers stranded for more than three and a half hours, from 8 PM to 11:30 PM, until they were rescued.
“It was an extremely difficult situation. The car’s engine was submerged in floodwaters coming from the Western Desert, where the mountains and hills are, and the engine stopped. The water carried us until the car got stuck in the sand. Luckily, a large truck came along and towed the minibus to a dry area, which took about three and a half hours,” Anasif Nassar told Zawia3.
The number of main flood pathways in Egypt’s Eastern Desert that flow into the Red Sea is 414 valleys and pathways, while 156 valleys and pathways flow into the Nile Valley. In Sinai, there are 114 pathways flowing into the Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Aqaba, and Gulf of Suez, while the northern coast includes 157 flood pathways that flow into the Mediterranean Sea.
Tropical Rains
According to geologist Mustafa Mahmoud Ismail, a consultant in geological and environmental sciences and former chief geologist at the Egyptian General Authority for Geological Survey and Mining Projects, floods are temporary rivers that appear after heavy rains and leave their visible tracks on mountain slopes or in the desert after draining their waters. They sweep away everything in their path, growing in size and speed until they reach a river or sea into which they flow, like the floods that descend from the Red Sea mountains in the Eastern Desert and flow into the Nile Valley.
He warns in his interview with Zawia3 of the dangers of tropical rains that fall in the summer months in southern Egypt and northern Sudan – especially if they are heavy – as they fall on some of the most dangerous flood areas topographically and environmentally.
The consultant in geological and environmental sciences confirms that the floods that hit southern Egypt are dangerous because their waters have enormous destructive power. These floods are not a new phenomenon in southern Egypt; they caused floods in 1992 and 1994, the Ras Gharib floods, and the floods that destroyed the city of Qena in Upper Egypt in April 1955. Floods
that struck Qena again in April 1979 led to the destruction of structures in Marsa Alam, Wadi Al-Mutuli on the Qeft-Quseir Road, and kilometer 85 on the Qena-Safaga Road. He explains that there are areas exposed to varying degrees of flood risk, while others are safe for establishing structures.
Ahmed Abdel Aal, a climate change expert and former head of the Meteorological Authority, confirms in his interview with Zawia3 that climate change has affected the weather in Egypt, especially at the start of seasons. For instance, the Indian Monsoon low occurred at the beginning of June, which typically happens on the 22nd of every year. Heavy rains fell in the first week of August on southern Egypt and parts of the Red Sea, causing floods, while the usual season for such rains would have been during the autumn, particularly in September. He points out that areas like East Oweinat and parts of the Western Desert used to experience heavy rains in other eras, forming lakes and large amounts of groundwater.
The Right to Safe Housing
Human rights lawyer Malek Adly, director of the Lawyers Network at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, believes that the culture of respecting building specifications is absent among Egyptians, which could lead to disasters that have yet to manifest because Egypt’s climate was relatively moderate. However, climate changes like extreme heat and floods are beginning to reveal the crisis. He hopes that no strong earthquake occurs that could cause a massive collapse of homes built without respecting construction specifications.
Adly explains that this problem dates back decades, exacerbated by regulatory deficiencies, local corruption, and allowing building violations as electoral bribes before the January 2011 revolution, followed by the absence of regulation for more than ten years. Local governments were supposed to monitor local governance and building safety, but there is strong societal resistance to building regulations issued in recent years and a lack of trust between citizens and government decisions.
He emphasizes that the right to safe housing is a government obligation, as stated in the 2014 Constitution: “The state guarantees citizens the right to adequate, safe, and healthy housing, preserving human dignity and achieving social justice.” However, a lack of resources and poor management prevents this from being realized on the ground, putting the authorities in a dilemma. They must choose between removing unsafe and illegal homes, which would displace residents without providing an alternative, or leaving them as they are. He notes that while the Ministry of Housing has implemented several housing projects for slum dwellers, the centralization of the state, the lack of fair resource distribution, and the inadequate political representation for all population segments cause the government to overlook development in Upper Egypt, which suffers from a lack of development. However, crises and disasters like floods may draw the authorities’ attention to these marginalized areas.
Data from the annual report of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics estimates that the total number of projects for developing informal areas affiliated with the Urban Development Fund amounts to about 70 projects, with a total of 89,363 housing units and 2,448 commercial units, at a total cost of 40.329 billion pounds during the period from 2010 to 2021. The implemented housing units were distributed between Cairo, Alexandria, and Ismailia governorates.
The cost of developing unsafe areas amounted to 63 billion pounds. A total of 357 unsafe informal areas were dealt with, with 246,000 housing units benefiting 1.2 million people, according to a 2023 statement by the Cabinet’s Media Center, which announced at that time that Egypt would be free of unsafe informal areas by the end of 2022.
MP Mohamed Attia El-Fayoumi, chairman of the Housing Committee in Parliament, blames local administrations in the areas affected by floods for failing to prevent the construction of homes near flood paths, which endangers the lives of residents and their property. He points out that poverty and ignorance drive some people to build their homes in unsafe ways, despite repeated government warnings and the recurrence of floods and heavy rains in those areas.
El-Fayoumi believes that the absence of sewage systems and flood pathways in some villages in Upper Egypt is the responsibility of local units. He highlights that the World Bank loan funds the Upper Egypt Local Development Program, calling for the program to include providing a safe living environment for poor families in Upper Egypt and establishing new housing for slum dwellers.
According to a study conducted at the Faculty of Regional and Urban Planning at Cairo University, flash floods/floods that hit Egypt between 1975 and 2014 resulted in massive human losses. The total annual direct economic losses ranged from 50 to 370 million US dollars, according to the 2020 Global Risk Platform estimates. Some experts estimated the total actual direct and indirect economic losses at approximately 2.1 billion US dollars. Most economic losses resulted from underestimating flash flood risks.
Egypt has previously implemented 1,627 engineering works for flood risk protection, with a storage capacity of 350 million cubic meters and a cost of 6.7 billion pounds, according to previous statements by Hani Sweilam, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation. However, the risk remains in light of climate change and the absence of building safety standards in most poor areas exposed to floods, which already suffer from severe deterioration of basic services and infrastructure, forcing their residents to live in unsafe homes amid the lack of fair distribution of development.
