Mozambique - Aid delivery, damage in Beira as death toll rises / Cyclone Idai deaths could exceed 1,
Descrição
(23 Mar 2019) A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations.
The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500 on March 21st, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged.
Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone.
Homes, villages and entire towns were submerged across central Mozambique, where flooding created a muddy inland ocean 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide.
The persistent rains lifted in some areas on March 21st, and floodwaters began to recede in Beira, the worst-hit city, and in the countryside, according to a Mozambican government report.
***
Local fishermen continued to ferry displaced people from Buzi to the port city of Beira on March 23rd, as a second week of efforts got underway to find and help tens of thousands of people after Cyclone Idai devastated a large swath of Mozambique.
On March 23rd, children and barefoot women were helped off a fishing boat by aid workers on the rainy shores of Beira.
One of them was Christina Machado, who arrived with her two children and a bandage on her ankle, which she said was cut by a tin roof during the cyclone and just treated on Friday.
"I'm looking for my husband," she said. He had been working in Beira for two months. She didn't know where she would be taken next.
Travelling against the ongoing traffic of displaced people moving towards the shattered city of Beira, now home to crowded camps, Veronica Fatia huddled on a wooden boat on her journey back to Buzi in the hope of finding her mother alive.
Carrying bags of rice and her two-year-old daughter, Fatia stepped carefully off the boat and walked into the remains of Buzi.
More than a week after Cyclone Idai roared in, the muddy floodwaters were still pouring off the river banks, draining what aid workers had called an inland ocean.
She found her mother, Maria Antonio, at a school - the happiness of the reunion tempered with fears for another daughter who had been going to school in Quelimane and has not been heard from since the cyclone hit.
Communications have been badly affected by the cyclone, separating families in the chaos.
"I don't know how she is surviving, if she is even alive," Antonio said.
Throughout the region, emergency air efforts are focuing on spotting stranded people and communities in the hope of dropping aid or plucking those in dire need to safety.
There are signs of life in the inundated landscape, even smoke from some cooking fires.
As waters recede, however, aid workers expect the death toll to rise as bodies are found.
With water and sanitation systems largely destroyed, waterborne diseases are also a growing concern.
00:39:09
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The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500 on March 21st, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged.
Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone.
Homes, villages and entire towns were submerged across central Mozambique, where flooding created a muddy inland ocean 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide.
The persistent rains lifted in some areas on March 21st, and floodwaters began to recede in Beira, the worst-hit city, and in the countryside, according to a Mozambican government report.
***
Local fishermen continued to ferry displaced people from Buzi to the port city of Beira on March 23rd, as a second week of efforts got underway to find and help tens of thousands of people after Cyclone Idai devastated a large swath of Mozambique.
On March 23rd, children and barefoot women were helped off a fishing boat by aid workers on the rainy shores of Beira.
One of them was Christina Machado, who arrived with her two children and a bandage on her ankle, which she said was cut by a tin roof during the cyclone and just treated on Friday.
"I'm looking for my husband," she said. He had been working in Beira for two months. She didn't know where she would be taken next.
Travelling against the ongoing traffic of displaced people moving towards the shattered city of Beira, now home to crowded camps, Veronica Fatia huddled on a wooden boat on her journey back to Buzi in the hope of finding her mother alive.
Carrying bags of rice and her two-year-old daughter, Fatia stepped carefully off the boat and walked into the remains of Buzi.
More than a week after Cyclone Idai roared in, the muddy floodwaters were still pouring off the river banks, draining what aid workers had called an inland ocean.
She found her mother, Maria Antonio, at a school - the happiness of the reunion tempered with fears for another daughter who had been going to school in Quelimane and has not been heard from since the cyclone hit.
Communications have been badly affected by the cyclone, separating families in the chaos.
"I don't know how she is surviving, if she is even alive," Antonio said.
Throughout the region, emergency air efforts are focuing on spotting stranded people and communities in the hope of dropping aid or plucking those in dire need to safety.
There are signs of life in the inundated landscape, even smoke from some cooking fires.
As waters recede, however, aid workers expect the death toll to rise as bodies are found.
With water and sanitation systems largely destroyed, waterborne diseases are also a growing concern.
00:39:09
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Palavra-chave: weather quelimane
