Cyclone Idai may have killed 1,000 people in Mozambique, says country's president

Cyclone Idai may have killed 1,000 people in Mozambique, says country's president

Four days after Cyclone Idai struck Mozambique, there are fears it may have killed more than 1,000 people in the country.

It is thought to have been the most destructive storm to have hit the southeast African nation in more than 10 years.

Widespread flooding has left whole villages submerged and bodies were floating in the water, as some areas were completely cut off by road.

Mozambique's president Filipe Nyusi said the official number of dead was 84 but added "it appears that we can register more than 1,000 deaths".

He also said it was a "real disaster of great proportions".

"The waters of the Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, making whole villages disappear and isolating communities, and bodies are floating," he said.

President Nyusi spoke after flying over the central port city of Beira and the rural provinces of Manica and Sofala, where there was severe flooding.

According to the Red Cross, 90% of Beira, which has 500,000 inhabitants, has been damaged or destroyed.

Jamie LeSueur, who led a Red Cross aerial assessment of the city, said the damage was "massive and horrifying".

"The situation is terrible," he said. "The scale of devastation is enormous."

"Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible."

Mozambique was hit last Thursday before the cyclone moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi.

More than 215 people have been killed by the storm in the three countries, including 89 in Zimbabwe, official figures show. And hundreds more were reported missing.

In Zimbabwe's Chimanimani district, rescuers were struggling to reach people cut off after torrential rains and winds up to 105mph swept away roads, homes and bridges and knocked out power lines.

UN agencies and the Red Cross have been helping with the rescue efforts that included delivering food and medicine by helicopter in the impoverished countries.

Mozambique is a long, narrow nation with a population of 30 million people, and has a 1,500-mile coastline along the Indian Ocean.

This time of year, it is prone to cyclones and tropical storms, and was struck by severe flooding from Cyclone Eline in February 2000.

That storm killed 350 people and made 650,000 homeless across southern Africa, including Zimbabwe. </s> The number of people killed in a powerful storm and preceding floods in Mozambique could exceed 1,000, the country's president said on Monday, putting the potential death toll much higher than current official figures.

Only 84 deaths have been confirmed so far in Mozambique as a result of Cyclone Idai, which has also left a trail of death and destruction across Zimbabwe and Malawi, with vast areas of land flooded, roads destroyed and communication wiped out.

Speaking on Radio Mocambique, President Filipe Nyusi said he had flown over the affected region, where two rivers overflowed. Villages had disappeared, he said, and bodies were floating in the water.

"Everything indicates that we can register more than 1,000 deaths," he said.

The cyclone has also killed 89 people in Zimbabwe, an official said on Monday, while the death toll in Malawi from heavy rains and flooding stood at 56 as of last week. No new numbers had been released after the cyclone hit the country.

Caroline Haga, a senior International Federation of the Red Cross official who is in Beira, one of the cities worst hit, said the situation could be far worse in the surrounding areas, which remained completely cut off by road and where houses were not as sturdy. </s> Floods in southern Malawi have killed 30 people and left over 230,000 people without shelter, a minister said Sunday.

Homeland Security Minister Nicholas Dausi, whose ministry is also responsible for disaster management affairs, on Sunday visited people affected by the deluges in two of the 14 southern districts affected.

He said his ministry had received reports of 30 deaths and about 238,000 villagers losing their homes since the start of the incessant downpours earlier this week.

"Their immediate needs are food, tents, blankets and chlorine to treat drinking water and anti-malaria medication," he said.

Malawi's President Arthur Peter Mutharika declared a state of disaster in the region late on Friday, after the storm caused rivers to break their banks, leaving villages underwater, and in some areas knocked out power and water supplies.

The same storm has also caused flooding in regions of Mozambique.

Mutharika directed emergency relief services to be coordinated immediately and also ordered Malawi's army to assist those trapped and displaced.

After several houses in his village collapsed, Tobias Timothy, who was camping in a school in Neno, a district around 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Malawi's second-largest city Blantyre, said he and others in the school were waiting for help.

"We need shelters," he told Reuters. "School is in session so we don't know what happens when learners return on Monday." </s> In this photo taken on Friday, March 15, 2019 and provided by the International Red Cross, people carry their personal effects after Tropical Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique. Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi says that more than 1,000 may have by killed by Cyclone Idai, which many say is the worst in more than 20 years. Speaking to state Radio Mozambique, Nyusi said Monday, March 18 that although the official death count is currently 84, he believes the toll will be more than 1,000. (Denis Onyodi/IFRC via AP)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — More than 1,000 people were feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the country, submerging entire villages and leaving bodies floating in the floodwaters, the nation’s president said.

“It is a real disaster of great proportions,” President Filipe Nyusi said.

Cyclone Idai could prove to be the deadliest storm in generations to hit the impoverished southeast African country of 30 million people.

It struck Beira, an Indian Ocean port city of a half-million people, late Thursday and then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi with strong winds and heavy rain. But it took days for the scope of the disaster to come into focus in Mozambique, which has a poor communication and transportation network and a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.

Speaking on state Radio Mozambique, Nyusi said that while the official death toll stood at 84, “It appears that we can register more than 1,000 deaths.”

U.N. agencies and the Red Cross helped rush emergency food and medicine by helicopter to the stricken countries.

Mount Chiluvo in central Mozambique was badly hit by flooding. One resident said he heard a loud noise, like an explosion, and suddenly saw a river of mud rolling toward his home.

“I was indoors with my children, but when we looked we saw mud coming down the road towards the houses and we fled,” Francisco Carlitos told Lusa, the Portuguese News Agency. The family lost their home and possessions but safely reached higher ground.

The country’s president, who cut short a visit to neighboring Swaziland over the weekend because of the disaster, spoke after flying by helicopter over Beira and two rural provinces, where he reported widespread devastation.

“The waters of the Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, making whole villages disappear and isolating communities, and bodies are floating,” Nyusi said.

Emergency officials cautioned that while they expect the death toll to rise significantly, they have no way of knowing if it will reach the president’s estimate.

The Red Cross said 90 percent of Beira was damaged or destroyed. The cyclone knocked out electricity, shut down the airport and cut off access to the city by road.

The destruction in Beira is “massive and horrifying,” said Jamie LeSueur, who led a Red Cross team that had to assess the damage by helicopter because of the flooded-out roads.

More than 215 people were killed by the storm in the three countries, including 89 in Zimbabwe, according to official figures. Hundreds more were reported missing.

Mozambique is a long, narrow country with a 2,400-kilometer (1,500-mile) coastline along the Indian Ocean. It is prone to cyclones and tropical storms this time of year.

In 2000, Mozambique was hit by severe flooding caused by weeks of heavy rain, a disaster made much worse when a cyclone hit. Approximately 700 people were killed in what was regarded as the worst flooding in 50 years.

Mozambique won independence from Portugal in 1975 and then was plagued by a long-running civil war that ended in 1992. Its economy is dominated by agriculture, and its exports include prawns, cotton, cashews, sugar, coconuts and tropical hardwood timber.

More recently it has been exporting aluminum and electric power, and deposits of natural gas were discovered in the country’s north. </s> MAPUTO/HARARE (Reuters) - The number of people killed in a powerful storm and preceding floods in Mozambique could exceed 1,000, the president said on Monday, putting the potential death toll greatly more than current figures.

Only 84 deaths have been confirmed so far in Mozambique as a result of Cyclone Idai, which has also left a trail of death and destruction across Zimbabwe and Malawi, with vast areas of land flooded, roads destroyed and communication wiped out.

Speaking on Radio Mocambique, President Filipe Nyusi said he had flown over the affected region, where two rivers had overflowed. Villages had disappeared, he said, and bodies were floating in the water.

"Everything indicates that we can register more than one thousand deaths," he said.

The cyclone has also killed 89 people in Zimbabwe, an official said on Monday, while the death toll in Malawi from heavy rains and flooding stood at 56 as of last week. No new numbers had been released following the cyclone's arrival in the country.

Caroline Haga, a senior International Federation of the Red Cross official who is in Beira, said the situation could be far worse in the surrounding areas, which remained completely cut off by road and where houses were not as sturdy.

Nyusi flew over areas that were otherwise accessible, and some of which had been hit by flooding before Cyclone Idai.

In Beira, Mozambique's fourth-largest city and home to 500,000 people, a large dam had burst, further complicating rescue efforts.

Large swathes of land were completely submerged, and in some streets people waded through knee-high water around piles of mangled metal and other debris.

In the early hours of Monday morning, rescuers launched dinghies onto chest-high waters, navigating through reeds and trees - where some people perched on branches to escape the water - to rescue those trapped by the flooding.

Meanwhile, rescuers were struggling to reach people in Zimbabwe's Chimanimani district, cut off from the rest of the country by torrential rains and winds of up to 170 km per hour that swept away roads, homes and bridges and knocked out power and communication lines.

Zimbabwean information ministry official Nick Mangwana told Reuters the number of confirmed deaths throughout the country was now 89. The body count is expected to rise.

Many people had been sleeping in the mountains since Friday, after their homes were flattened by rock falls and mudslides or washed away by torrential rains.

The Harare government has declared a state of disaster in areas affected by the storm. Zimbabwe, a country of 15 million people, was already suffering a severe drought that has wilted crops.

Beira, which sits at the mouth of the Pungwe River, is also home to Mozambique's second-largest port, serving as gateway for imports to landlocked countries in southeast Africa.

The director of a company that jointly manages the port, Cornelder, based in the Netherlands, said the port had been closed since last Wednesday but would hopefully resume operations on Tuesday.

Two cranes would be working and the company had two large generators and enough fuel for now, though damage to access routes and roads further inland was more likely to cause a problem, said the director, who asked not to be named.

The fuel pipeline running from Beira to Zimbabwe was believed to be intact, the person said, though communication was still very patchy and therefore the situation at the port remained uncertain.

In February 2000, Cyclone Eline hit Mozambique when it was already devastated by its worst floods in three decades. It killed 350 people and made 650,000 homeless across southern Africa, also hitting Zimbabwe. </s> Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi says that more than 1,000 may have by killed by Cyclone Idai.

Speaking to state Radio Mozambique, Nyusi said Monday that although the official death count is currently 84, he believes the toll will be more than 1,000.

Nyusi spoke after flying over the port city of Beira and viewing the flooding and devastation. He said he saw bodies floating in the flooded areas.

The Red Cross said that 90 percent of Beira, a city of 500,000, had been damaged or destroyed.

Beira has been severely battered by the cyclone which cut off electricity, forced the airport to shut down and cut off road access to the rest of the country. Cyclone Idai first hit Beira last week and then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi. </s> Second cyclone to hit Mozambique leaves five dead and homes flattened

Mozambican officials have urged those living near two rivers in the country's north to move to higher ground, as Cyclone Kenneth dumped heavy rains and caused some flooding.

The cyclone killed five people and flattened homes around Mozambique's northern coast before moving inland and pounding the province of Cabo Delgado with rain, fuelling fears rivers could burst their banks and leave huge areas under water.

The National Directorate of Water Resources Management said the Megaruma river had registered a marked increase in volume, causing some flooding in river-side and low-lying areas in the districts of Mecufi and Chiure, south of the provincial capital of Pemba.

The Messalo river was also expected to cause flooding in the districts of Muidumbe and Macomia, north of Pemba, it said in a statement.

"Faced with this scenario, [the directorate] recommends the population living in areas referred to above withdraw immediately to high and safe areas."

Cyclone Kenneth slammed into Mozambique just six weeks after Cyclone Idai, which levelled the port city of Beira before bringing deadly floods that submerged villages and vast stretches of land.

Cyclone Idai killed over 1,000 people across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

The World Food Programme warned that Cyclone Kenneth could in the coming days dump twice as much rain on northern Mozambique, raising concerns of a repeat of the flooding in a region prone to floods and landslides.

"Worryingly, it is still raining heavily," said Daw Mohammed, CARE's director of humanitarian operations, who is in the port city of Pemba, the provincial capital.

The death toll from Kenneth — marking the most powerful storm to ever strike Mozambique's northern coast — rose to five, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, citing the Government.

It had already killed three people in the Comoros when it made landfall in Mozambique on Thursday night (local time), packing storm surges and winds of up to 280 km per hour.

UNICEF said an additional 368,000 children were now at risk in Mozambique, one of the world's poorest countries and already struggling to cope with the impact of Cyclone Idai, which left an estimated 1.85 million people in the country in need.

Michel Le Pechoux, UNICEF deputy representative in Mozambique, said the organisation was "deeply worried" that communities in Cabo Delgado — which has no history of cyclones — would not have been prepared for the scale of the storm.

"The soil is saturated with rain and the rivers are already swollen, so the emergency is likely to get worse from flooding in the next few days," he said in a statement.

With power and communications knocked out in many areas, aid agencies were struggling to assess the extent of the devastation.

Mozambican officials said almost all of the homes on the island of Ibo had been destroyed, while the neighbouring mainland district of Macomia had suffered heavy damage.

Trees were ripped from their roots and banks, petrol stations and hotels were also damaged.

Aid workers said some areas, such as Mocimboa de Praia in the north, were also a concern as there had been little communication with them.

The government and aid agencies said 30,000 people had been moved to safety before the storm struck, but it was estimated a total of almost 700,000 were at risk </s> PEMBA, Mozambique, April 29 (Reuters) – Rains grounded aid flights in Mozambique for a second day on Monday, hampering efforts to reach survivors of Cyclone Kenneth as the death toll there jumped to 38.

Rescuers managed to use a brief break in the downpours to send one helicopter packed with aid to the island of Ibo, where hundreds of homes were flattened by the second cyclone to hit the country in less than six weeks.

But rains started again and conditions were too dangerous for the next flight to take off, the United Nations said. Roads to rural districts further north were swamped and impassable after torrential rains on Sunday.

“Unfortunately the weather conditions are changing too fast and threatening the operation,” said Saviano Abreu, a spokesman for the United Nations’ humanitarian arm OCHA.

Cyclone Kenneth slammed into the Comoros and then Mozambique’s province of Cabo Delgado on Thursday with storm surges and winds of up to 280 kph – stretching resources in a region still recovering from Cyclone Idai which struck further south in March.

The storm knocked out power and communications. Some rural communities were reduced to mounds of jumbled wood, with only the occasional structure and coconut tree left standing.

Four people died in the Comoros, the United Nations said. Mozambique’s National Institute of Disaster Management said its death toll stood at 38 on Monday – up from an earlier estimate of five – and just over 168,000 people had been affected.

After the first hit, heavy rains pounded Mozambique’s north, an area prone to floods and landslides. Information about the scale of the flooding in more remote districts remains scant.

In the port city of Pemba at least, waters had started to recede, OCHA’s Abreu said. Water was still waist-deep in some neighborhoods. One man ferried residents in a wooden boat. Others just waded through the deluge, some carrying belongings on their heads.

Idai destroyed the port city of Beira and submerged entire villages, vast swathes of land and 700,000 hectares of crops. It killed more than 1,000 people across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Forecasters have said Kenneth could drop twice as much rain as Idai on Mozambique’s north. Authorities urged people living near rivers to move to higher ground over the weekend.

The United Nations said it had released $13 million in emergency funds for Mozambique and the Comoros to provide food and water and repair infrastructure. </s> Floods caused by incessant downpours have left 23 people dead across Malawi, the country's said on Friday.

In addition to the confirmed deaths, 11 people were also been reported missing with around 110,000 affected, a statement said.

Twelve districts, all in the south of the country, had been blighted by the deluges.

defence force and and rescue teams were working in collaboration with the Red Cross, the statement added.

In one affected district, Mulanje, camps had been set up for displaced people, told AFP.

The rains also hit transport links with two major bridges submerged, cutting off access to Blantyre, Malawi's second largest city.

According to the country's Meteorological Department, sporadic downpours are due to continue until the middle of next week.
The floods from the predecessor of Cyclone Idai cause 23 deaths and 11 missing in southern Malawi.