Cyclone Idai toll expected to rise
A cyclone that ripped across Mozambique and Zimbabwe has killed at least 162 people with dozens more missing and caused massive and horrifying destruction in the Mozambican city of Beira, authorities and the Red Cross said on Monday.
Cyclone Idai tore into the centre of Mozambique on Thursday night before barrelling on to neighbouring Zimbabwe, bringing flash floods and ferocious winds, and washing away roads and houses.
“The scale of damage caused by cyclone Idai that hit the Mozambican city of Beira is massive and horrifying,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement.
It said 90% of the city of about 530,000 people and its surrounding area had been damaged or destroyed.
“The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous,” the federation’s Jamie LeSueur was quoted as saying in the statement.
“Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed.
“Some affected communities are not accessible.”
A large dam burst on Sunday and cut off the last road to Beira, he said.
A toll compiled on Monday by AFP from official sources puts the death toll in Mozambique at 73, with 55 in Beira alone, and 89 in Zimbabwe.
At least 150 more are missing in Zimbabwe, many believed to be government workers whose housing complex was engulfed by floods.
Mozambique’s environment minister, Celso Correia, warned that the death tally would rise.
“I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed,” he said on Sunday night at the Beira international airport, which reopened after being temporarily closed because of cyclone damage.
In Zimbabwe, Idai swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces.
It left a trail of destruction that acting defence minister Perrance Shiri said resembled the aftermath of a full-scale war.
“There was a lot of destruction both of facilities and people,” Shiri said on television, speaking from the affected eastern highlands region.
Roads have been swallowed by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods, according to an AFP photographer.
“This is the worst infrastructural damage we have ever had,” Zimbabwean transport and infrastructural development minister Joel Biggie Matiza said.
Zimbabwe’s eastern district of Chimanimani was the worst hit, with houses and most of the bridges washed away by flash floods.
The most-affected areas are not yet accessible, and high winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights.
Two pupils and a worker at a secondary school in the area were among those killed after a landslide sent a boulder crashing into their dormitory.
Soldiers on Sunday helped rescue the surviving nearly 200 pupils, teachers and staff who had been trapped at the school.
Chimanimani legislator Joshua Sacco said 150 to 200 people were still missing, most of them government workers. –