The strongest cyclone in living memory has just thrown up over the Beriah.
In a ruinlandskap try the city’s 600,000 inhabitants pick up the rubble of their former lives. The immediate livsfaran is over – but now is the food and the water end and the aid delivered may not reach.
the Warnings had come a few days earlier. But it was only when the storm blew up as Amélia Castigo Jose understood how serious it was.
Already the day before, blew it sharply, so that the ceilings began to fly. But it was nothing compared to what happened when the storm really hit. Three times, pulled it through the city. We have never seen anything like this before, ” says Castigo Jose to DN.
the Light bounces between the walls in pastel colours, the glassy lakes of water and a pink sky where the clouds drifting in the fresh breeze.
The wounded to the airport in Beira is the city’s only link to the outside world at the moment. Photo: Erik Esbjörnsson
, where Castigo Jose live, is located in a slum area in the centre of Beira.
to get into the alleys must crawl under a great baobab-trees which are likely to be several hundred years old. Orlando Namajau says that his mother, born in 1940, grew up under its shadow.
the Palm where the ring was broken up in the evening, when we went. Then we woke up at three o’clock in the morning by the sound when baobaben overturned. It may be there now until the authorities come and cut it up there, it is too large for us to be able to do something with it, ” he says.
the Tide rose four metres, six metres in some places, and gushed over the ramparts erected at the beach to protect the town against the sea. The cyclone Idai had been formed out of the sea a few days earlier, around the 9th of march, and its center hit the coast just a few kilometers north of the city centre. On the evening of the 14 march was gusting to 170 kilometers an hour. Then followed the rain. It poured down for four days before the storm bedarrade.
the fishing industry and tourism now became an enemy when the storms blew up.
Now look to Beira like a war zone. A couple of diggers have begun clearing the worst of the mess. Hardly a single house has survived without damage. Churches and schools are without roofs, cars have been thrown out in the fields, elstolparna is located transversely with the wires in the trailer. Left is the water, reflecting the first rays of the sun as the residents seen on ten days.
– Everything is ruined. I usually run the grain from the fields to the market and just everything is gone. The fields, no one will be able to grow on in a very long time. There is nothing left to eat, ” says Castigo José’s friend, Laurinda José Chipanga who live across the water-filled courtyard.
Around 400 square kilometers is under water is coloured brown by the mud. The fields will be unusable for a long time but right now is the rescue operation to find the voice of the isolated countryside. Photo: Erik Esbjörnsson
large parts of the centre of Beira which is still under water. In total 400 square kilometers of land have soaked, the first of the tide, and then by the rain. In four days, threw it down, first over the coastal areas and then in the mountains in the west, towards the border with Zimbabwe, and this rainfall has since moved back toward the coast through the river system that could not handle the flood waters. The rivers Pungwe and Buzi has overflowed its banks.
According to the UN, can the cyclone Idai be the worst disaster of its kind ever in the southern hemisphere. Around 400 000 people have been left homeless. There are 1.7 million people in the affected areas, according to the UN food programme, WFP, and their need for help is acute.
Beira, with a port which is one of the most important along the coast of Mozambique, is the gateway to an important handelskorridor which runs west towards Malawi and Zimbabwe. Also, these countries have been affected by the cyclone. The roads have collapsed under the flood waters and at the moment, the airport is the city’s only link to the outside world. However, it has not the capacity to receive the large amounts of food and clean water needed for the distressed.
have visited the affected areas, and he fears that over 1000 people may have died. Save the children estimates that 260 000 children in Mozambique are located in the disaster area.
From the airport in Beira yesterday helicopters with supplies in the shuttle to reach the needy in rural areas.
But this is just the beginning – the three countries are among the poorest in the world, and diseases like cholera, guiding instructions ” from above, and malaria could spread in the stagnant water.
Similar scenes played out 19 years ago when cyclone Leon-Eline pulled in over the same area. Amélia Castigo Jose remember the storm but we believe that this is something completely different. Idai was stronger and more protracted.
usually sell pumpkins in the market. She has a few left and she has cut up into pieces to share out to the family.
– We have shared on the pieces that satisfy your hunger. But there is nothing they will be satisfied, ” says Amélia Castigo Jose. Then points her to a bucket with green water.
“It’s what we have to drink,” she says.
Link to the graphics