At least three people were killed and dozens injured in the tourist resort of Vilankulo when a tropical cyclone slammed into Mozambique’s southern coast this week, the National Emergency Operations Centre and the Red Cross said on Friday.
The town was ”extensively damaged”, according to Tapiwa Gomo, regional information officer for the International Red Cross in the coastal city of Beira.
”Most of the buildings have been destroyed,” Gomo said after the category-four Cyclone Favio made landfall in the southern Inhambane province, bringing winds of up to 200km/h and driving rain.
German Agro Action (GAA) had earlier estimated that about 95% of houses in the town of 120 000 residents had been destroyed.
”It looks like Magdeburg after the war,” a GAA worker in Vilankulo said, comparing the destruction to the effects of the firebombing of the German city during World War II. Uprooted trees blocked roads, and roofs had been torn off homes, the local hospital and market.
Between 100 and 120 patients were being cared for at the hospital, the Red Cross’s Gomo said.
A depot containing medical supplies had been destroyed, as had a jail, from which several hundred prisoners escaped. The town was also without water and electricity, the GAA said.
The Red Cross said it planned to set up 200 tents to accommodate people displaced by the storm. The organisation also urgently needed blankets, Gomo said.
The storm weakened to a tropical depression as it moved north over the country towards the flood-afflicted Zambezi River valley, with winds dropping to about 60km/h, according to the Red Cross.
It was feared that further rains could worsen conditions in the central region, where flooding has already claimed at least 29 lives and forced about 120 000 people into emergency accommodation in recent weeks.
The meteorological service of Mozambique on Friday announced the approach of a second cyclone, which was expected to hit Madagascar over the weekend.
SA’s response
The South African government was to hold a briefing on Saturday to announce its response to the situation in Mozambique, the Department of Provincial and Local Government said.
Minister Sydney Mufamadi and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad would address the media at Lanseria airport on Saturday morning on the country’s response to the disaster following their return from the neighbouring country.
On Thursday, the government denied it had ignored the plight of Mozambicans who had been hit by floods and cyclone damage.
This was after the Democratic Alliance’s Africa spokesperson, Joe Seremane, had accused it of ”turning a blind eye” and ”standing back and waiting” instead of offering to help its neighbour. — Sapa-dpa, Sapa