Mozambique mourns, Zimbabwe death toll rises from Cyclone Idai

Mozambique began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for more than 200 victims of Cyclone Idai, while the death toll in neighbouring Zimbabwe rose to more than 100 from one of the most destructive storms to strike southern Africa in decades.

Torrential rains were expected to continue into Thursday and floodwaters were still rising, according to aid groups trying to get food, water and clothing to desperate survivors. It will be days before Mozambique's inundated plains drain toward the Indian Ocean and even longer before the full scale of the devastation is known.

People have been clinging to trees and huddling on rooftops since the cyclone roared in over the weekend, and aid groups were desperately trying to rescue as many as they can. The United Nations humanitarian office said the town of Buzi, with some 200,000 people, was at risk of becoming at least partially submerged.

"Floodwaters are predicted to rise significantly in the coming days and 350,000 people are at risk," the UN office said.

UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters, "this may be one of the worst natural disasters to hit southern Africa in living memory." 

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa received a sombre welcome when he arrived at the hard-hit mountain community of Chimanimani on the eastern border with Mozambique. Zimbabwean officials have said some 350 people may have died.

"We do not want to hear that anyone has died of hunger," Mnangagwa said.

Some Zimbabwean bodies have been swept by rivers down the mountainside to Mozambique, according to officials.

Entire villages were swept away, said Gen. Joe Muzvidziwa, who was leading the military's rescue efforts in Zimbabwe. Some people had been out at beer halls when the cyclone hit and came home to find nothing left.

Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi said late Tuesday that more than 200 people were confirmed dead in his country. After flying over the affected region on Monday, he said he expected the death toll to be more than 1,000.

"Some of the peasants in Mozambique were calling some of our people to say 'We see bodies, we believe those bodies are coming from Zimbabwe,"' said July Moyo, Zimbabwe's minister of local government.

Families congregated in Chipinge town, near Chimanimani, hoping to find ways to get to impassable areas where they expected to find bodies of relatives.

Churches, companies and individuals have donated clothes, food and other supplies to families that lost their homes.

International aid trickling in

International aid has started trickling in to ease the humanitarian crisis.

"Everyone is doubling, tripling, quadrupling whatever they were planning," said Caroline Haga of the Red Cross in Beira, Mozambique, referring to supplies and aid workers. "It's much larger than anyone could ever anticipate."

The UN allocated about $26 million for a humanitarian response to the crisis. The European Union released 3.5 million euros ($5 million Cdn) in emergency aid, while the U.K. pledged up to 6 million pounds ($10.5 million Cdn). Neighbouring Tanzania's military airlifted 238 tons of food and medicine.

Global Affairs Canada said Canada has provided $40,000 in preliminary humanitarian funding through the Red Cross for Mozambique, and may provide more. It also said Canada is a long-time supporter of a number of UN pooled funds including the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) which yesterday allocated $20 million US to respond to Cyclone Idai.

Matthew Pickard of the humanitarian organization CARE said the response to Idai has been similar to prior natural disasters. Local authorities and international non-governmental organizations worked their way to the area in the first days, with additional aid destined to arrive soon after.

The slow-moving catastrophe of the flooding and the inability to access some of the hardest-hit areas has limited the ability of some to see the scale of the cyclone. But, Pickard said, as those details become clearer, aid will spike.

"Over the next few days we'll learn just how big it is," he said by phone from Lilongwe, Malawi. "These are countries that are not usually making headlines and they're making headlines. With the story comes people's intent to respond empathetically."

Sacha Myers of the non-profit Save the Children, speaking from Maputo, Mozambique, described rising floodwaters, "rivers and dams bursting their banks" and a death toll in the hundreds that was destined to climb.

She was awaiting the arrival of a cargo plane carrying emergency supplies, but said getting them where they needed to go remained difficult with roads washed away or submerged and few options for storage in dry areas.

"We're having an unfolding crisis that's getting worse and worse," she said.

The United Nations was deploying resources too, deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said, but logistics remained challenging and the hardest hit areas, including Chimanimani, Zimbabwe, remained inaccessible.

As better data emerges from the disaster zone, donors will be standing by to make money and other resources such as medicine available, said Dr. E. Anne Peterson of the non-profit health organization Americares.

"It's early and a really big disaster gets attention fast, and the more media covers it, the more people realize there is a need and the more likely we are to see them getting engaged," she said.

Ilan Noy, chair in the economics of disasters at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, said aid was likely to flow from dozens of countries to the African nations. How much is pledged and when, he said, correlates to the media coverage a given disaster gets, not to mention factors such as the geostrategic interests and previous colonial ties of an affected country. Ultimately, the dollar figures that are announced can bear little meaning, with the numbers typically stand-ins for the value of salaries and supplies sent overseas.

"They don't have enough helicopters or they don't have enough doctors," Noy offered as an example. "In that emergency phase, it doesn't really matter how you count it. You need resources. You don't need cash."