Toll from Cyclone Idai nears 400 as UN launches health aid
Friday March 22 2019
A man digs a grave on March 21, 2019 at the site where other Cyclone Idai victims were buried in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe, as more bodies are being recovered and immediately buried as some are already decomposing. PHOTO | ZINYANGE AUNTONY | AFP
The death toll from a cyclone that ravaged three southern African countries last week headed Thursday towards 400, as officials estimated that more than 1.7 million people had been affected by the storm and 15,000 people were still stranded in floodwater.
As the toll surged from the region's biggest storm in years, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced plans to tackle an emerging threat to survivors from malaria and cholera.
Cyclone Idai smashed into the coast of central Mozambique last Friday, unleashing hurricane-force winds and rains that flooded the hinterland and drenched eastern Zimbabwe.
A woman collects metal sheets from a damaged supermarket to re-build her destroyed house following the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique, on March 21, 2019. PHOTO | YASUYOSHI CHIBA | AFP
Mozambican Land and Environmental Minister Celso Correia said 242 lives had been lost and 15,000 out of 18,000 stranded people still needed to be saved, many of them on rooftops or even in trees.
"Yesterday we had counted 15,000 people that still need rescue today -- 15,000 people who are in bad shape. They are alive, we are communicating with them, delivering food, but we need to rescue them and take them out," he told reporters.
A picture taken on March 20, 2019 shows the broken part of the building of a logistics company after a strong cyclone hit Beira, Mozambique. PHOTO | YASUYOSHI CHIBA | AFP
Transit centres
A total of 65,000 people are in transit centres, he said.
"Our priority now is to make sure we take food, shelter and medicine to the people that are isolated in small islands or in big islands and villages," Correia said at Beira airport, the humanitarian relief coordination hub.
People from the isolated district of Buzi take shelter in the Samora M. Machel secondary school used as an evacuation center in Beira, Mozambique, on March 21, 2019, following the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai. PHOTO | YASUYOSHI CHIBA | AFP
On Wednesday there were just five helicopters rescuing the marooned, according to Adrien Nance who is heading the operation.
"It's encouraging that the humanitarian response is really starting to come to scale. But more help is needed," said Jamie LeSueur of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Herve Verhoosel said the number of people affected in Mozambique was 600,000, but warned: "That number will definitely go up."
Families conduct traditional rituals at the mass grave site of victims of Cyclone Idai that hit Ngangu, a township of Chimanimani, on March 20, 2019. PHOTO | ZINYANGE AUNTONY | AFP
Ultimately, around 1.7 million people in Mozambique will need assistance, Verhoosel said in Geneva.
Flood waters
Pall bearers waded through flood waters carrying a black coffin containing the remains of Tomas Joaquim Chimukme, who died after his house collapsed on him in Beira.
In Zimbabwe, state broadcaster ZBC said the death toll had risen to 139, up from 100 on Wednesday, while the WFP said its estimates of the number of people there affected by the cyclone had jumped from 15,000 to 200,000.
Children play on a container overturned by Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique, March 21, 2019. PHOTO | YASUYOSHI CHIBA | AFP
In Chimanimani, close to Zimbabwe's border with Mozambique, "some 90 percent of the district has been significantly damaged," Verhoosel said.
An AFP reporter in the area said the district had been cut off.
Roads had been gobbled up by massive sinkholes and bridges ripped to shreds by flash floods -- a landscape that Zimbabwe's acting defence minister Perrance Shiri, who is also agriculture minister, said "resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war".
Rebecca Albino (right), a mother of three children, mourns beside the coffin of her husband, Tomas Joaquim Chimukme, during his funeral, following a strong cyclone that hit Beira, Mozambique, on March 20, 2019. PHOTO | YASUYOSHI CHIBA | AFP
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, after touring the area, said the country would observe two days of mourning from Saturday.
Mozambique declared three days of mourning, taking effect on Wednesday.
Despair
"In Rusitu, I saw unmitigated despair," Mnangawa told reporters in Harare.
A picture shows houses in a flooded area of Buzi, central Mozambique, on March 20, 2019, after the passage of cyclone Idai. PHOTO | ADRIEN BARBIER | AFP
"Big boulders (were) recklessly strewn on what used be a settlement, a banana market and even a police post."
At the police station, "both serving officers and prisoners were washed away alongside other government structures and private residences," he said.
Mnangagwa also announced steps to cope with future disasters, including mapping the country for weather-related risk, creating a national disaster fund and stepping up global advocacy on climate change.
People gather on the roof of a house submerged by floods in Buzi on March 20, 2019. PHOTO | ADRIEN BARBIER | AFP
In Malawi, the WHO said on Wednesday, the storm had affected 922,000 others, of whom 82,000 had been displaced.
The WHO announced an emergency plan for 10,000 people.
"The displacement of large numbers of people and the flooding triggered by Cyclone Idai significantly increases the risk of malaria, typhoid and cholera," said Matshidiso Moeti, the agency's regional director for Africa.
Foreign aid
The three countries are some of the poorest in the region and depend heavily on foreign aid. The UN launched an appeal for assistance overnight.
"We do not yet know enough about the level of destruction to give an accurate estimate of the amount of this call for funds, but it will be important," spokesman Farhan Haq said at UN headquarters in New York.
Aid agencies said they were prepared for the cyclone but not for the massive floods that followed.
Residents gather stranded on the stands of a stadium in a flooded area of Buzi, central Mozambique, on March 20, 2019, after the passage of cyclone Idai. PHOTO | ADRIEN BARBIER | AFP
Mozambique bore the brunt from rivers that flow downstream from its neighbours.
Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa have been drafted in to fly rescue missions and distribute aid in central Mozambique.
Roads out of Beira have been destroyed and the city itself, home to around half a million people, has been 90-percent damaged or destroyed.