Tropical Storm Freddy Kills 100 On Return To Malawi, Mozambique

Tropical Storm Freddy, which ravaged southern Africa for the second time in a month over the weekend, left a trail of destruction and more than 100 fatalities as it made landfall in Mozambique and Malawi on Monday.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, Freddy is one of the most powerful storms to have ever been observed in the southern hemisphere and may turn out to be the longest-lasting tropical cyclone.

On Saturday, it pounded central Mozambique, toppling buildings and causing extensive flooding near the port of Quelimane. Later, it moved inland towards Malawi with torrential rains that triggered landslides.

 

Due to the fact that the power supply and phone signals were cut off in some areas of the affected area, the full extent of the damage and fatalities, particularly in Mozambique, is not yet known.

At a press conference, Charles Kalemba, the commissioner of the Department of Disaster Management Affairs, reported that the storm had claimed the lives of 99 people in Malawi, 85 of whom were killed in Blantyre, the country’s major commercial centre.

Reuters reports that the total number killed by storm Freddy in Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar since it first made landfall last month is now around 136.

The central hospital in Blantyre had received at least 60 bodies by early afternoon, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) country director Marion Pechayre told Reuters by telephone, adding that some 200 injured were being treated in the hospital.

The injuries were from falling trees, landslides and flash floods, she said. “A lot of (houses) are mud houses with tin roofs, so the roofs fall on people’s heads.”

Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya told Reuters that rescue teams had been looking for people in Chilobwe and Ndirande, two of the worst-affected townships in Blantyre, the country’s second-largest city, where it was still raining on Monday and many residents were without power.

“Some missing people are feared buried in rubble,” Kalaya said.

 

CRITICAL SITUATION

Malawi’s national electricity company EGENCO said that power generation capacity was unstable and that it had experienced total system shutdown twice on Monday. It has shut down all major hydro power stations to protect them from damage, it said.

At least ten people died in Mozambique’s Zambezia province, a provincial delegate from the National Institute of Disaster Risk Management, Nelson Ludovico, said on public broadcaster Radio Mozambique, adding that the figures were still provisional.

“The situation is critical in Zambezia province. We can’t advance with an accurate picture of the scale of damage because there’s no communications with all the regions,” Health Minister Armindo Tiago said on public radio.

READ ALSO: Cyclone Freddy Returns

Guy Taylor, chief of advocacy, communications and partnerships for U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in Mozambique, told Reuters from Quelimane that humanitarian agencies there did not have the capacity to deal with a disaster of this size.

“We saw a lot of destroyed buildings and clinics. People’s homes had their roofs torn off by the wind. Even before the cyclone hit we saw localised flooding,” he said.

The wind had died down on Monday but there was still a lot of flooding that had destroyed crops and created a risk of waterborne diseases, he said.

Mozambique has seen more than a year’s worth of rainfall in the past four weeks.

Malawi has been battling the deadliest cholera outbreak in its history, and U.N. agencies have warned the situation could now get worse.

Scientists say fossil fuel-driven climate change is making tropical storms stronger, as oceans absorb heat from greenhouse gas emissions and when warm seawater evaporates heat energy is transferred to the atmosphere.