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Cyclone Kenneth had winds equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane.

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The post Cylone Idai in Mozambique first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

An aerial view taken in Beira, Mozambique, on April 1, 2019 shows the Picoco refugee camp where 2,000 displaced people are looking for shelter.

HARARE, Zimbabwe — The death toll from the cyclone that ripped into southern Africa last month is now above 1,000, while the number of cholera cases among survivors has risen above 4,000.

The United Nations has described Cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi nearly a month ago, as “one of the deadliest storms on record in the southern hemisphere.”

Zimbabwe’s information minister on Tuesday said the death toll in that country has risen to 344. Mozambique has reported 602 deaths and Malawi at least 59.

Zimbabwe’s efforts are now “confined to recovery of the deceased” and the government will send pathologists to Mozambique to help identify bodies, said Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa. An unknown number of Zimbabweans were washed down mountainsides into Mozambique, which also has turned from search and recovery efforts to relief work providing food and shelter to survivors.

Zimbabwe, whose economy is badly struggling, said it needs $612 million to assist survivors and has appealed for international support.

A final death toll is yet to be established and might never be known.

A cholera outbreak among survivors was declared in Mozambique on March 27 and had led to 4,072 cases and seven deaths as of Tuesday morning, according to government figures.

Malaria a growing concern

Most of the cases of the acute diarrhea disease have been in Mozambique’s hard-hit port city of Beira, where running water recently was restored. The system, however, reaches just 60% of the population of roughly 500,000.

More than 745,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine have been distributed since the vaccination campaign launched last week, the government said. Cholera is spread via contaminated water or food and can kill within hours if untreated. Treatment is relatively easy with dehydration and antibiotics.

Now malaria is a growing concern as floodwaters continue to recede in parts of the sodden region. More than 7,500 cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been reported, the government said.

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/04/10/cyclone-idai-death-toll_a_23709594/

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“Some will be in critical, life threatening situations,” Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, coordinator in the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, said of the affected people.

“We’re now going out on the ground, dropping people off from helicopters to determine what the critical needs are.”

Idai flattened homes and provoked widespread flooding after slamming into Mozambique near the port of Beira on March 14. It then ripped through neighbouring Zimbabwe and Malawi, killing at least 686 people across the three southern African countries.

Mozambique – which has a population of around 30 million – was hit hardest, with tens of thousands of homes destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people displaced across an area of some 3,000 square km (1,200 square miles) – roughly the size of Luxembourg.

Receding flood waters have allowed greater access, and a greater sense of how much people have lost. Thousands of people, stranded for more than a week by the flooding, are now being moved to safer shelters.

Increasingly, the relief focus has turned to preventing or containing what many believe will be inevitable outbreaks of malaria and cholera.

Though no cholera cases have yet been confirmed, health workers on the ground have reported an upsurge in cases of diarrhoea – a symptom of the disease.

“We are testing as we go,” said Rob Holden, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) incident manager in the capital Maputo. “But nonetheless we are treating acute watery diarrhoea, it’s the same as treating cholera. That’s just the diagnosis.”

BIG, DENSE POPULATION

Dozens of people queued in front of a clinic in Beira’s Munhava district on Tuesday, as nurses wearing surgical masks out a chlorine solution to prevent the spread of diseases like cholera.

“There is a big population, dense population in Beira,” said Gert Verdonck, emergency coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). “Of course any spread of any kind of epidemic will be a lot quicker here.”

The WHO is dispatching 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine from a global stockpile. The shipment is expected to arrive within 10 days, and a first round of vaccinations will target 100,000 people.

Cholera is spread by faeces in sewage-contaminated water or food, and outbreaks can develop quickly in a humanitarian crisis where sanitation systems are disrupted. It can kill within hours if left untreated.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has designated Mozambique a level three emergency, placing it on a par with Syria, Yemen and South Sudan. The agency is preparing to feed 1.7 million people in Mozambique.

The U.N. is appealing for $282 million to fund the first three months of the disaster response in Mozambique, and a total of $337 million. So far, only 2 percent of that amount has been funded.

SEARCHING THROUGH RUBBLE

In Zimbabwe, where 179 people have died, another 329 people were still unaccounted for on Monday.

In hard-hit Chimanimani district, villagers used hoes and shovels to dig through debris on Tuesday and search for missing relatives believed buried by the mudslides unleashed by the cyclone.

One family has spent a week digging day and night for four relatives, in what was once a settlement of 500 people but has been reduced to rubble.

Large rocks, some more than two metres (six feet) high, which rolled from a nearby mountain at high speed are what remains after the storm swept away a police camp, houses and an open market.

“I am an orphan now and I am so much in pain because I lost my brother who looked after me. He was more of a father to me,” said Sarah Sithole, 32, whose policeman brother was washed away while on night duty at the police station.

“We will continue searching until we find him and bury him. We will not rest,” she said, her hands and feet covered with red soil.

Around 95 percent of roads in affected districts have been damaged, impeding access to rescuers with earth moving equipment. Zimbabwe has requested for search dogs from South Africa to help look for those missing, a local government official said.

The WFP said it will aim to distribute food assistance to 732,000 people in Malawi and 270,000 in Zimbabwe.

The post Nearly 2 million Mozambicans in need after cyclone -UN first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A cyclone which struck southern Africa has affected almost three million people, of whom nearly 500,000 have been driven from their homes, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Cyclone Idai smashed into Mozambique on March 15, unleashing hurricane-force winds and rain that flooded much of the centre of the country and then battered eastern Zimbabwe and Malawi.

More than 700 people have been killed in Mozambique and Zimbabwe alone and hundreds are missing, according to an AFP toll compiled from figures provided by governments and some UN agencies.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said roughly 3,125 square kilometres (1,200 square miles) of land had been swamped, and nearly three million people across the three countries had been affected.

“Close to 500,000 have been displaced,” the agency said in a briefing note.

In New York, UN humanitarian aid chief Mark Lowcock launched an appeal to provide Mozambique with $282 million (250 million euros) of relief aid over the next three months.

Similar campaigns will shortly be launched for Zimbabwe and Malawi, he said.

Hunger

Survivors of the cyclone began receiving medicine, food and tents Tuesday as floodwaters receded, enabling a detailed picture of the crisis to emerge for the first time.

In the small village of Bejaga, some 150 survivors were hungry.

In the past week relief workers have dropped off “just a cup of (vitamin fortified) soya per family. It’s way too little,” said peasant farmer Francisco Lopez. “We are waiting,” he told AFP.

He had salvaged a few maize cobs in the mud and he sifted through them grain by grain, looking for any edible morsel. He had dried the food on a tarpaulin, but much of it was rotten after nearly two weeks under water.

“We really have nothing to eat, we have received almost nothing in aid,” he said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Sebastian Rhodes Stampa said Monday that 30 aid missions were flying in while others were going by road “so we can really deliver volume.”

International Organisation for Migration (IOM) chief Antonio Vitorino cautioned, though, that food shortages were likely for months to come because of destruction to farmland.

“Given its devastating impact, Cyclone Idai could rank as the worst disaster to hit the region in decades,” he said in a statement.

An estimated half a million hectares (1.2 million acres) of crops have been destroyed, much of which had been ready to harvest, and loss of livestock is likely to be severe.

Health peril

Stagnant water, decomposing bodies and lack of sanitation in overcrowded shelters in Mozambique could create breeding grounds for cholera, typhus and malaria, experts say.

The WHO says it is withdrawing 900,000 doses of cholera vaccines from a global stockpile to help forestall an epidemic.

The government has already identified some suspected cases of cholera, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Elhadj As Sy, said.

“The worst thing is the children crying and looking for their parents… It is heartbreaking,” he said, adding that it remained unclear how many children may have been orphaned.

Medical services in the affected region were stretched even before the cyclone hit.

Beira hospital’s operating theatre sustained serious damage. As many as 17 health centres have lost their roofs, Doctors without Borders (MSF) said.

The South African military has deployed several aircraft to the affected area and an EU-funded WFP helicopter is supporting rescue and recovery efforts.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-displaced-southern-africa-cyclone.html

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Tens of thousands of people are still believed to need rescuing after the cyclone hit Mozambique’s port city of Beira on March 14 before moving inland.

At least 360 people have died in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, and 2.6 million people have been affected, the United Nations said, as Idai’s winds ripped apart homes, schools and medical centres.

Accompanying heavy rains have triggered floods, inundating swathes of farmland, while health services and clinics have broken down and water supplies have been damaged.

People from the town of Buzi unload at Beira Port, Mozambique, after being rescued from the flood waters. Thousands of people are still stranded after after Cyclone Idai hit the country last week

People walk on the flooded street of Buzi, central Mozambique, after the devastation cyclone which the country’s President fears may have killed as many as 1,000 people – amid fears that diseases could push the death toll even higher

People collect metal sheets from a damaged supermarket to re-build their destroyed houses following the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai in Beira

Medecins Sans Frontieres aid workers said people would resort to drinking water contaminated with waste and sewage as well as dead bodies which will be discovered as water levels recede.

The only reservoir with treated water has only one to two days of drinking water left, the charity’s James Kambaki said.

Another aid worker said: ‘With latrines having been washed away and sanitary systems disrupted, open defecation and the pollution of water sources is a major concern. These can lead to waterborne illnesses, such as cholera and typhoid.’

About 90 percent of the infrastructure in Beira city alone has been destroyed, said rescue workers, and rescue teams are battling to reach communities cut off due roads and bridges being washed away.

In Zimbabwe’s eastern mountainous province of Manicaland, aid workers from the charity Mercy Corps said they had begun distributing purified drinking water packets, hygiene and sanitation supplies.

Mildred Makore of Mercey Corps said populated areas such as Chimanimani town, were still cut off by road. With no power, hospitals had run out of fuel to operate back-up generators.

A woman from the Inhamudima area of Berea killing birds in order to feed her familyas a result of lack of food after cyclone Idai made landfall in Sofala Province

People walk is the standing water in a street on Friday in downtown Beira, Mozambique. Thousands of people are still stranded after after Cyclone Idai hit the country last week

A woman from the Inhamudima area of Berea washing her family’s clothes as flood waters recede after cyclone Idai made landfall in Sofala Province, central Mozambique

‘Both Chimanimani and Chipinge are malaria zones and with people sleeping outside, not having access to clean water sources and, once temperatures increase again, the potential for case numbers to rise is great,’ she said.

In Malawi, where almost 1 million people have been affected by floods, aid workers said they were worried about the spread of disease in some 170 makeshift camps where more than 125,000 people have sought refuge without sufficient toilets.

‘This may be the most devastating such disaster in the region’s history, and its damage can escalate quickly if we do not act immediately,’ said Concern Worldwide’s U.S. chief executive Colleen Kelly.

‘We must prevent a second wave of destruction from additional flooding, crop loss, hunger, and potential disease.’

Survivors of Cyclone Idai, listen to a volunteer from Mozambique Red Cross, after arriving to an evacuation centre in Beira, Mozambique, on Thursday

People from the town of Buzi unload from a boat at Beira Port after being rescued. The devastation in the city has sparked fears of diseases such as cholera

People from the isolated district of Buzi take shelter in the Samora M. Machel secondary school used as an evacuation center in Beira

People from the town of Buzi get off a boat in pouring weather at Beira Port as they escape the devastated coastal city

A woman carries salvaged metal sheeting amid the shattered city of Beira, Mozambique

Men play checkers beside a fallen tree leaning on a wall after the strong cyclone a week ago in Beira

The situation in Beira ‘boiling’ as residents suffered shortages of food, water and other essentials one week after a devastating cyclone, the head of a South African rescue operation said on Friday.

Connor Hartnady, rescue operations task force leader for Rescue South Africa, said residents of Beira – a low-lying port city of 500,000 people – were becoming fed up with shortages.

He also said a group of 60 people had been discovered trapped by flood water in an area north of Beira during a reconnaissance flight.

The storm’s torrential rains caused the Buzi and Pungwe rivers, whose mouths are in the Beira area, to burst their banks.

Roads into Beira were cut off by the storm, and most of the city remains without power.

Pedestrians walk on the edge of a collapsed bridge in Nhamatanda, about 60 miles west of the port city of Beira

People use makeshift boats to navigate the flooded areas after the passage of the cyclone Idai in Matarara, Sussudenga district, in Mozambique

An aerial view shows Beira, central Mozambique, on Wednesday, after the passage of cyclone Idai

The post Death toll from Cyclone Idai ‘could spiral past a thousand’ in Mozambique amid fears 500,000 survivors are at risk of fatal diseases and starving villagers resort to drinking from dirty puddles first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

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

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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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