Cyclone Idai caused more havoc than initially reported as Mozambique said over a thousand people may have been killed as the cyclone smashed into the central part of the country.
\nIn neighbouring Zimbabwe, Idai left 89 dead and at least 150 more missing.
\nThe city of Beira in central Mozambique bore Cyclone Idai\u2019s full wrath on Thursday before the storm barrelled on to neighbouring Zimbabwe, unleashing fierce winds and flash floods and washing away roads and houses.
\n\u201cFor the moment we have registered 84 deaths officially, but when we flew over the area \u2026 this morning to understand what\u2019s going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,\u201dMozambican President Felipe Nyusi said in a nationwide address.
\n\u201cThe scale of damage\u2026 (in) Beira is massive and horrifying\u201d, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said.
\nNinety percent of the city of some 530,000 people and its surrounding area has been \u201cdamaged or destroyed,\u201d it said in a statement.
\n\u201cThe situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous,\u201d the IFRC\u2019s Jamie LeSueur said.
\n\u201cAlmost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible.\u201d
\nA large dam burst on Sunday and cut off the last road to Beira, he said.
\nSofala Province governor Alberto Mondlane warned that the \u201cbiggest threat we have now, even bigger than the cyclone, is floods because it\u2019s raining more and more\u201d.
\nEmma Beaty, coordinator of a grouping of NGOs known as Cosaco, said: \u201cWe\u2019ve never had something of this magnitude before in Mozambique\u201d.
\n\u201cSome dams broke, and others have reached full capacity, they\u2019ll very soon open the flood gates. It\u2019s a convergence of flooding, cyclones, dams breaking and making a potential wave: everything\u2019s in place so we get a perfect storm,\u201d she said.
\nMozambique\u2019s environment minister, Celso Correia, has also warned that the death tally would rise.
\n\u201cI think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed,\u201d he told AFP on Sunday night at Beira international airport, which re-opened after being temporarily closed because of cyclone damage.
\n\u201cFlying roofing sheets beheaded people,\u201d Rajino Paulino recounting the moment the cyclone smashed into the city.
\n\u201cWe are sleeping rough, we are eating poorly and we don\u2019t have houses anymore.\u201d
\nIn Zimbabwe, Idai swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces, leaving destruction that the acting defence minister, Perrance Shiri, said \u201cresembles the aftermath of a full-scale war\u201d.
\n\u201cThere was a lot of destruction both on our facilities and on people,\u201d said Shiri speaking on television from the affected eastern highlands region.
\nSome roads were swallowed up by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods, according to an AFP photographer.
\n\u201cThis is the worst infrastructural damage we have ever had,\u201d Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Joel Biggie Matiza said.
\nThe eastern district of Chimanimani was worst-hit, with houses and most of the region\u2019s bridges washed away by flash floods.
\nThe most affected areas are not yet accessible, and high winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights.
\nTwo 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.
\nSoldiers on Sunday helped rescue the surviving nearly 200 pupils, teachers and staff who had been trapped at the school in Chimanimani.
\nJoshua Sacco, lawmaker for Chimanimani, told AFP that between \u201c150 to 200 people\u201d are missing.
\nThe majority of them are thought to be government workers, whose housing complex was completely engulfed by raging waters. Their fate is currently unknown because the area is still unreachable.
\n\u201cWe are very worried because all these houses were just suddenly submerged under water and literally washed away and that is where we have about 147 missing,\u201d he said.
\nZimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who cut short a visit to Abu Dhabi, said on arrival on Monday, \u201cwe are deeply grieved as a nation\u201d.
\nBut the government has come under fire for failing to move timesously to evacuate people.
\nThe main labour movement,the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said the disaster was avoidable.
\n\u201cAuthorities knew about the cyclone weeks before it struck, but did absolutely nothing to prepare for its eventuality,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cyclone Idai caused more havoc than initially reported as Mozambique said over a thousand people may have been killed as the cyclone smashed into the central part of the country. In neighbouring Zimbabwe, Idai left 89 dead and at least 150 more missing. The city of Beira in central Mozambique bore Cyclone Idai\u2019s full wrath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}