By Chrispin Inambao WINDHOEK Floods in the Zambezi River yesterday rose to an unprecedented 7.18 metres from the 7.09 metres gauged two days ago, while on a more sombre note the list of flood victims inceased to six after a speedboat evacuating teachers and pupils capsized. The inciden,t in which Simpule Simana (10), a niece of Vincent Simana who measures the water level in the Zambezi River, and Namasiku Mubita (9) are presumed to have drowned, occurred at around 14h00 on Tuesday when a speedboat evacuating them capsized. The boat transporting teachers and pupils from Nankuntwe Combined School to an evacuation centre at Schuckmannsburg capsized after it was rocked and tossed by a strong whirlwind that created perilous waves on a vast expanse of water. Speaking to New Era yesterday, Detective Inspector Christopher Masule Kalimbula narrated the incident that took place in a flooded area adjacent to the Zambezi River. After the boat sank, its occupants, which included a boy and a female teacher, managed to swim to safety, but the teacher’s belongings such as pots, bedding material and clothing, and several firearms belonging to a male teacher, and even the boat, went under. By yesterday afternoon, the bodies of the girls had not yet been recovered despite a joint search operation involving members of REMU, police, NDF members and several villager volunteers from both Nankuntwe and Schuckmannsburg using dugout canoes. The seasoned police investigator said the ill-fated boat was part of an ongoing mission to establish a makeshift school at Schuckmannsburg for pupils from flood-hit Nankuntwe. He said the chances of finding the two girls alive were “very slim”, while the speedboat that might already have been dragged into the Zambezi River could only be recovered by locating it and securing it to huge, balloon-like, inflatable salvage equipment. The girls’ next of kin have already been notified about the unfolding tragic turn of events and they apparently seem to have braced themselves for the worst as hopes to find the two alive in the crocodile-infested waters now appear to be very slim. Detective Inspector Kalimbula said that, although the two bodies have not yet been retrieved from the river, the police have opened inquest dockets. Three people drowned in the first recorded flood-related deaths over the weekend and, besides the two children presumed dead, a cattle herder drowned on Monday when the canoe he was paddling from a cattle post to Sakuwa in the Schuckmannsburg area sank. He was identified as Tedius Liyali Mubita, a 23-year old Zambian national, whose remains were recovered along the Zambezi River. His body is at the police morgue in Katima Mulilo awaiting a post-mortem. Vincent Simana, the Senior Research Technician in the Division of Water Environment in the Department of Water Affairs at Katima Mulilo, said the water level on Tuesday reached 7.04 metres. Though the water level has already reached the 7.18-metre mark, even before floods peak in March and April, the highest reading chronicled in recent decades at Katima Mulilo was 7.17 metres recorded at the height of the record 1979 floods. Simana believes this year’s water level could easily edge past the 8.00-metre mark and cause flooding on a scale never before seen by current generations. Hundreds of huts and unharvested maize fields in Kabbe Constituency are already inundated, the gravel roads are flooded, some houses in Katima Mulilo are flooded, a N$75-million Katima Mulilo Water Front Development Project under construction is partially submerged and flood water has seeped under the road to Wenela Border Post. Fields in Kongola and Linyanti constituencies are under water and thousands of people – among them school-going children – are displaced, while cattle graze in swamped areas. *Meanwhile, Gabriel Kangowa, the acting director in the Directorate of Emergency Management, said a team comprising himself and Mbeuta Ua-Ndjarakana, the Permanent Secretary: Cabinet Secretariat, will undertake another trip to the flood-hit area on Sunday. He said the week-long mission would be a fully-fledged assessment that would involve two helicopters, one of which will be smaller than the other and which will land on the flooded settlements. He said the team would also evacuate those in need of urgent medical attention and who cannot travel to the nearest health centre because they have been completely cut off. And yesterday morning the Directorate Emergency Management dispatched a truckload of 400 mattresses to be distributed to hundreds of students displaced by the floods. Plans are also at an advanced stage to send another truck with bags of maize meal for the flood victims in Caprivi, while Cabinet has authorized the funding of the flood relief.