Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

A cyclone that ravaged three southern African countries last week has officially killed at least 350 people, affected more than 1.7 million others and left 15,000 people still stranded by floods, according to estimates today.

As the toll surged from the region’s biggest storm in years, the World Health Organization (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.

Mozambican Land and Environmental Minister Celso Correia said 217 lives had been lost and 15,000 out of 18,000 stranded people still needed to be saved.

“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 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.

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.”

Ultimately, around 1.7 million people in Mozambique will need assistance, Verhoosel said in Geneva.

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.

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”.

Families on Wednesday were using hoes to dig through mounds of soil in search of their missing relatives, the reporter saw.

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.

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 which made landfall early Friday, but not for the massive floods that followed.

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.

Perched on the terraces of a sports stadium, scores of marooned people stare down at a basketball court filled with dirty brown water.

Six days after a vicious tropical storm tore through their neighbourhood in Buzi, central Mozambique, they remain trapped by flood water.

A short distance away, another group is huddled together under an orange garden umbrella, on the roof of a church.

Stranded residents are desperate to be evacuated, but food and clean water are even more pressing needs.

“The situation is very bad, we haven’t eaten since Thursday, until today. We are sleeping outside, everything is destroyed, our houses are destroyed, everything is gone, we have recovered nothing,” said Aunicia Jose, 24, speaking in Gwara-Gwara, near Buzi.

A mob of villagers rushed to an open space where a helicopter had just dropped food, an AFP reporter saw.

Joel Baertschi, a chopper pilot for a Christian humanitarian group, told AFP his organisation had flown in tonnes of food, sometimes plucking people from treetops and roofs, and was now setting up a camp for survivors.

“We can tell clearly that there is a lot less water now. I reckon one to two metres (3.5 to seven feet) (down) although I am not an expert,” he said.

“When we first saw them on Monday, they were in water up to their necks.”

He added: “Most of them were on rooftops or gathered on trees huddling into each other and today we actually saw (some of) them walking in Buzi.

“Although the town is still flooded, it gives an indication that the water is going down and help will be easier to access the place.”

The official death toll from Cyclone Idai has hit 139 in Zimbabwe, with fears that the figure could rise, as close to 200 people remain unaccounted for and over 100 are still marooned in the country’s two worst affected districts, Chipinge and Chimanimani.

According to official figures released by the information, media and broadcasting services ministry on Thursday afternoon, Chimanimani recorded the highest number of deaths, which stand at 127, while Chipinge recorded six.

One hundred and eighty-seven are reported missing in Chimanimani and two in Chipinge, while the number of those who remain marooned stands at 136 and three respectively.

Idai, which formed over the Mozambique Channel before moving inland via Beira on Thursday last week, has sparked a serious humanitarian crisis, as 4 313 people have been displaced, according to the ministry.

Chimanimani, being the hardest hit, has the highest number of displacements followed by Makoni, Buhera, Mutare rural, Mutasa and Mutare urban.

Three thousand and eighty-five people were displaced in Chimanimani’s ward 15, while 600, 529, 63, 45 and 31 were displaced in Makoni, Buhera, Mutare rural, Mutasa and Mutare urban respectively.

Local government and national housing minister July Moyo, who heads the inter-ministerial task force on Idai, told the media after Tuesday’s cabinet briefing that there are fears that the total number of dead could rise.

“There are reports that bodies believed to be from Zimbabwe have been seen floating in Mozambique,” he said.

“Some have floated all the way into Mozambique and some of the peasants in that country were calling some of our people saying ‘we see bodies, we believe those bodies are coming from Zimbabwe’”.

“The total number we were told there could be 100, some going as far as saying there could be 300, but we cannot confirm this situation. Our army is going on foot to Rusitu in order to go and assess the situation on the ground.”

As the rescue efforts continue, Zimbabweans have come together to mobilise aid for Idai victims.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Wednesday visited the victims and said it was impossible for aid to reach the affected because of the massive destruction of the provincial road network.

“The cyclone destroyed roads in this area and this means that aid can only come through using helicopters, but we have not been able to do so because of the weather,” he said while addressing victims at a safe house in Chimanimani.

“However, since it has cleared, you will be assisted with things like medication, food and other consumables.”

Of the deceased, 74 people have already been buried. Due to the inaccessibility of the area, locals had to use makeshift coffins as they laid to rest their loved ones.

However, Zimbabwe’s leading funeral insurance companies – Doves and Nyaradzo Funeral Services – have since chipped in to offer decent burials for the dead.

Across the border in Mozambique, according to the Red Cross, the cyclone destroyed 90% of the fourth-largest city, Beira, and submerged villages after the Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed.