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Members of the public and military personnel search for survivors and bodies in Ngangu township Chimanimani, Manicaland Province, eastern Zimbabwe, on March 18 2019, after the area was hit by the cyclone Idai.Zinyange Auntony / AFP – Getty Images

JOHANNESBURG — 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.

A man stands next to the wreckage a vehicles washed away in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, after the area was hit by the cyclone Idai on March 18, 2019.Zinyange Auntony / AFP – Getty Images

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.”

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.

More than 215 people were killed by the storm in the three countries, including more than 80 in Zimbabwe’s eastern Chimanimani region and more than 50 in Malawi, according to official figures. Hundreds more were reported injured and missing, and nearly 1,000 homes were destroyed in eastern Zimbabwe alone.

Doctors Without Borders said rivers have broken their banks leaving many houses fully submerged and around 11,000 households displaced in Nsanje, in southern Malawi.

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.

Damage at the airport in Beira, Mozambique, in the aftermath of the passage of the cyclone Idai on March 18, 2019.Deborah Nguyen / UN WFP via AFP – Getty Images

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

The United Nation’s humanitarian office said the government issued flood warnings and said heavy rains were forecast for the next 24 hours, including in areas already hit hard by Idai.

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.

U.N. officials cited reports that Beira Central Hospital’s emergency room was flooded and without power, and that much of the building’s roof had collapsed. Doctors Without Borders said it had completely ceased operations in Beira hospital, local health centers and throughout the community.

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.

The U.N. also warned of devastation outside Beira, in particular of livestock and crops.

People stand on a roof surrounded by flooding in an area affected by Cyclone Idai in Beira on March 18, 2019.Rick Emenaket / Mission Aviation Fellowship via AFP – Getty Images

“As this damage is occurring just before the main harvest season, it could exacerbate food insecurity in the region,” the U.N. humanitarian office known as OCHA said.

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.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/cyclone-may-have-killed-more-1-000-people-mozambique-president-n984681

The post Cyclone may have killed more than 1,000 people, Mozambique president says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi have been hit by a vicious cyclone that has killed more than 140 people, left hundreds more missing and stranded tens of thousands who are cut off from roads and telephones in mainly poor, rural areas.

U.N. and government officials report that Cyclone Idai has affected more than 1.5 million people in the three southern African countries.

Hardest hit is Mozambique’s central port city of Beira where the airport is closed, electricity is out and hundreds of homes have been destroyed. The storm hit Beira late Thursday and moved westward into Zimbabwe and Malawi, affecting thousands more, particularly in eastern areas bordering Mozambique.

Homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and police stations have been destroyed by the cyclone. Thousands have been marooned by the heavy flooding.

‘Dire situation’

Tropical cyclone Idai battered central Mozambique on Friday killing at least 21 people and cutting off more than half a million people in the port city of Beira.

Even before the cyclone made landfall on Friday, heavy rains earlier in the week had already claimed 66 lives and displaced 17,000 people in Mozambique, local officials said.

They had also affected neighbouring Malawi, where 56 people died and nearly a million others were affected, the government said.

As the cyclone hit, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi appealed for emergency assistance for the victims before leaving for eSwatini.

“We have compatriots suffering without hope and we have to restore hope,” he said on Friday as he set off on a three-day state visit to the kingdom that was previously known as Swaziland.

As the cyclone approached, the Red Cross sent out more than 200 volunteers to areas most likely to be affected.

“The situation is dire but we don’t know the exact particulars,” said Jamie LeSueur, the Red Cross’s roving emergency operations manager for Africa, who was making the 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) trip from Maputo to Beira by road after flights were cancelled and the airport closed.

Describing it as a “difficult emergency” to tackle, he told AFP said it would require “the full force of the humanitarian community behind the government of Mozambique to respond to rapidly.”

Electricity rationed in S. Africa

Beira’s international airport was closed after the cyclone made landfall, damaging the air traffic control tower, the navigation systems and the runways.

“Some runway lights were damaged, the navigation system is damaged, the control tower antennas and the control tower itself are all damaged,” an official at the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) told AFP on Friday

“The runway is full of obstacles and parked aircraft are damaged.”

The storm also affected power supplies to neighbouring South Africa which imports electricity from Mozambique to supplement its own production.

South Africa’s power utility company Eskom on Saturday introduced severe electricity rationing “due to the loss of additional capacity, which includes a reduction in imports from Mozambique,” it said in a statement.

Source: https://www.dailysabah.com/africa/2019/03/16/140-killed-hundreds-more-missing-as-cyclone-idai-hits-mozambique-malawi-zimbabwe

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