Blantyre, March 20 (U.S.): Days before Cyclone Freddy hit Mozambique on March 11 for the second time, cars with loudspeakers drove through the streets of the coastal town of Quelimane warning residents to move to shelters on higher ground with stocks of food and groceries. water.
Most people have heeded the warnings, knowing from bitter experience the damage such storms can do: 600 people died in Cyclone Idai in 2019, Reuters reported.
Local authorities around my neighborhood came to alert us of the impending danger, and they blew the whistle, recalls Amelia Antonio, 31, a resident of Kilimani.
Preparations helped save lives in one of the most powerful storms to ever hit Africa.
Mozambique has so far recorded 76 deaths, which is a relatively small number compared to previous disasters like this.
The storm was far deadlier in neighboring Malawi, where at least 447 people were killed when Freddy tore through the country’s southern tip and flooded the main trading hub of Blantyre.
The warnings were inconsistent and residents often did not heed them, many of whom told Reuters they did not know where to go if they left their homes.
Mozambique and Malawi are among the poorest 8% of countries in the world, according to United Nations data.
More than half of the population in every country lives below the poverty line.
The contrast between the two southern African countries holds lessons for a world where global warming and population growth have created thriving shanty towns vulnerable to the devastating storms fueled by climate change.
As these storms grow stronger, sophisticated warning systems of the kind Mozambique is now using will be needed, and ballooning cities like Blantyre will have to tackle the scourge of unplanned slums that rapid urbanization is creating.
“What’s left of my house are just standing sticks,” Antonio told Reuters in a phone interview on Thursday. If I had been there I don’t know what would have happened.
It’s a very organized (warning) system that goes down to the village level,” said Mirta Collard, the UN Resident Coordinator in Mozambique.
In Malawi, warnings were sounded as the storm moved inland.
Many people didn’t get it, including Madalu Makawa, a resident of Chilubuye, a densely populated town in Blantyre that was one of the areas hardest hit by the storm.
Malawi usually floods low-lying land, Felix Washon of the Malawi Red Cross Society told Reuters from Blantyre.
This means that anyone in the hills believes they are safe despite radio, television and social media messages warning them of the storm.
NAA