Malawi on Monday launched an emergency appeal for food and tents for victims of a strong weekend earthquake that left three dead and about 300 injured in the northern part of the country.
“We immediately need family tents, blankets, plastic sheets, maize flour and other items so that families are not separated,” Lilian Ng’oma, commissioner for the government’s Disaster Management Department, said in a statement.
Up to 4 676 people have been displaced and 1 110 houses destroyed after a series of quakes over the last two weeks in the uranium-mining Karonga district.
Sunday’s quake registered at least six on the Richter scale, the largest since the tremors began two weeks ago, geologists said.
“We are asking well-wishers including donors, religious organisations, business people and individuals to come forward with assistance,” Ng’oma said.
“We will appreciate any assistance rendered,” she added.
Ng’oma said her department was also looking for “big tents to keep pupils in schools” after scores of classroom blocks collapsed and others developed cracks.
She said she hoped that President Bingu wa Mutharika would “soon declare the area a disaster.”
Malawi has recorded the quake at 6,2, while the US Geological Survey put it at six. It struck at 1.19am local time on Sunday.
Gasten Macheka, commissioner for the district that borders Tanzania, said the three dead included a child crushed by falling bricks, and two adults.
Eighty-one people have been admitted to the district hospital.
Macheka said the quake destroyed several buildings in the district, which is being mined for uranium by Australian firm Paladin.
Scores of other people have been injured, including residents who were inside a school dormitory when its walls collapsed.
More than 200 000 people have been urged to evacuate their homes in the district, which lies in the earthquake-prone East African Rift Valley. This stretches from the Red Sea through Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique.
Geologists say the region is an area of seismic activity because of the existing extensive structural fractures, which are points where tremors can be generated.
This month’s quakes are the biggest to hit Malawi in 20 years. — AFP