Desperate bid to recover from Cyclone Idai

PILOTS flying for South African and Mozambique aviation aid organisations – the first to witness the devastation after Cyclone Idai struck on March 14 – had to make life-or-death decisions on the fate of survivors stranded on trees and rooftops.

“There was one man on top of a roof who lost two of his little children, who had been swept away because they could not hold on anymore. He had been on the roof for four days before we reached him,” said Mercy Air chief executive Allan Luus.

With little space in the aircraft to rescue the stranded man – the pilot dropped some high energy biscuits close by and had to keep flying.

“The scale of destruction is overwhelming,” said Luus.

A Christian based, non-profit aviation aid organisation in White River, Mercy Air was among the first to react to the trail of havoc wreaked by the cyclone – whose cost is still being accurately assessed as the days unfold.

Mercy Air worked with the Mission Aviation Fellowship, known as Ambassador Aviation in Mozambique. Using its Cessna 208 from MAF’S Mozambique programme in conjunction with the Airbus AS350 light helicopter from South Africa to provide assistance, these aircraft surveyed the damage.

“Now that it seems the rain has stopped, the people trapped on roofs are getting desperate for water.

He said two task force operations were being set up at two locations in Mozambique and aid in the form of a “big” helicopter from Tanzania and two Oryx from the South African Air Force had been made available.

Meanwhile, as the cost of Cyclone Idai was still being assessed, Mercy Air AS350-B2 helicopter pilots reported seeing “inland oceans stretching for miles upon miles”.

According to the World Food Programme, preliminary projections are that at least 1.7 million people have been affected in the direct path of the cyclone in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, with a further 920 000 hit in Malawi, where more than 1 000 people are feared dead.

Flying out of the port city of Beira, reports are that 90% of the town has been destroyed and damaged. The 24 hospitals in the region have been demolished and 900 homes swept away by the floods.

Acting MAF Mozambique manager Jill Holmes said: “We were able to distribute about 1500kg of high-energy biscuits – dropping boxes out of the helicopter, sometimes into the water near a small patch of land, onto the roof of a house or onto trees.”

The UN described the cyclone as “one of the worst weather-related disasters to hit the southern hemisphere”.

Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar all suffered high levels of rainfall but the worst hit has been in Mozambique, with rivers flowing downstream from neighbouring countries. The area close to the River Buzi, west of Beira, is one of those particularly hard hit.

Mission Aviation Fellowship was founded in 1945 by World War II pilots who had a vision on how aviation could be used to spread the gospel.