Cyclone-hit nations slowly getting aid
NEW YORK — International aid has started trickling into the east African countries of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi to ease the humanitarian crisis created by floodwaters from Cyclone Idai.
Relief efforts that were initially stifled by airport closures slowly gained steam Wednesday, and foreign governments began pledging aid to help the region recover from the worst flooding in decades.
“Everyone is doubling, tripling, quadrupling whatever they were planning,” said Caroline Haga of the Red Cross in Beira, Mozambique, referring to supplies and aid workers. “It’s much larger than anyone could ever anticipate.”
The United Nations allocated $20 million for a humanitarian response to the crisis. The European Union released $3.9 million in emergency aid, while the U.K. pledged up to $7.9 million. Neighboring Tanzania’s military airlifted 238 tons of food and medicine.
The United Arab Emirates plans to provide $4.9 million to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the Emirates News Agency reported Wednesday, citing the Emirates Red Crescent. Norway said it was providing $700,000.
The U.S. Agency for International Development said Wednesday that it deployed disaster experts to Mozambique and provided $400,000 in emergency funding. The African Union Commission will give $350,000, according to its chairman.
Matthew Pickard of the humanitarian organization CARE said the response to Idai has been similar to previous natural disasters. Local authorities and international nongovernmental organizations worked their way to the area in the first days, with additional aid destined to arrive soon after.
The slow-moving catastrophe of the flooding and the inability to access some of the hardest-hit areas has limited the ability of some to see the scale of the cyclone. But, Pickard said, as those details become clearer, aid will spike.
“Over the next few days we’ll learn just how big it is,” he said by phone from Lilongwe, Malawi.
Sacha Myers of the nonprofit Save the Children, speaking from Maputo, Mozambique, described rising floodwaters, “rivers and dams bursting their banks” and a death toll in the hundreds that was expected to climb.
She was awaiting the arrival of a cargo plane carrying 51 tons of emergency supplies, but said getting them where they needed to go remained difficult with roads washed away or submerged and few options for storage in dry areas.
The U.N. was deploying resources, too, deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said, but logistics remained challenging and the hardest-hit areas, including Chimanimani, Zimbabwe, remained inaccessible.
As better data emerge from the disaster zone, donors will be standing by to make money and other resources such as medicine available, said Dr. E. Anne Peterson of the nonprofit health organization Americares.