Disaster officials and aid agencies are closely monitoring Tropical Cyclone Favio, due to make landfall in flood-drenched Mozambique on Thursday, as it crosses the narrow sea channel from Madagascar.
By 6pm local time on Wednesday afternoon, Favio was a very intense category-three storm with winds of about 185km/h, according to the Tropical Storm Risk website. It was forecast to increase in intensity to a category-four storm.
The South African Weather Service on Wednesday predicted wave heights of up to 14m, adding the storm was expected to pass close to the island of Bazaruto early on Thursday morning.
A major storm hitting Mozambique’s central provinces, where more than 120 000 people have already been displaced, could seriously hurt ongoing relief efforts.
”It would be another emergency,” said João Ribeiro, the deputy chief of Mozambique’s disaster response agency. However, he voiced confidence the government and civilian relief partners would be able to cope.
”We need to keep an eye on it,” warned Karin Manente, deputy country director for the World Food Programme (WFP), which is coordinating food supplies for people displaced by flooding along the Zambezi River since early February.
Manente said government officials appear to be up to the task. ”What we have seen so far in relation to the flood response is that INGC [the disaster agency] has shown quite a high degree of preparedness. The fact that we have had no known deaths due to the current floods is testament to their effectiveness.”
Media reports have mistakenly attributed 29 deaths to the recent floods, but those fatalities were a result of flooding in other parts of the country from October last year to January this year.
”The problem [the government is currently facing] is funds,” Ribeiro said. ”We are working together with Unicef [the United Nations Children’s Fund], the Mozambique Red Cross and others. The capacity exists; the problem is the financing.”
More helicopters are also needed; the only helicopter in use in the entire relief effort has been rented from the WFP.
Madagascar
The impact of Favio has already been felt in Madagascar after it scrapped the southern tip of the Indian Ocean island, disrupting relief operations trying to reach 582 000 people struggling to cope with the aftermath of a drought in the south, and flooding that has left at least three dead and displaced 33 000 throughout the country.
The storm caused heavy rains that reduced road access to the south-eastern parts of the island, said Gianluca Ferrera, WFP deputy country director for Madagascar.
Madagascar is currently in the middle of a ”cyclone season”. Six have already hit, with Bondo at the end of December and Clovis in January causing the most damage.
Ferrera said flooding has disrupted agriculture, with ramifications for already precarious food security. The National Office for Risks and Catastrophe Management estimated the south-eastern Vatovavy Fitovinany region has lost 70% to 87% of its rice paddies.
The latest situation report by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned of the ”high potential” for outbreaks of water-borne disease in the capital, Antanananarivo.
The Malagasy government is expected to make a formal donor appeal for $243-million in aid — mainly for infrastructure reconstruction and agricultural rehabilitation.