Southern Africa: Storm Ana leaves tens of thousands of victims | Arabnews en
LILONGWE: The downpours subsided on Friday but Storm Ana which hit three southern African countries left behind tens of thousands of people homeless and vast areas cut off by flooding.
A total of 86 people died in Madagascar, Mozambique and Malawi, according to the latest reports from the authorities. Rescuers are still struggling to access certain places, many roads are cut off, bridges have collapsed.
In Malawi, where 20 people have been killed, impassable roads are forcing families to carry bodies on foot to where they will be buried.
A state of natural disaster has been declared there. Part of the country is still in the dark, the sudden rise in water has forced the shutdown of generators. Power companies are scrambling to restore power to hospitals and schools.
The telephone lines are also gradually restored, allowing the first accounts of several days of anguish to be heard.
Reached by AFP in the town of Chikwawa, in southern Malawi, Yohane Misongwe, described residents taking refuge in trees when the water surged.
"We spent two days up in the trees and on rooftops waiting for the water to recede. Some were rescued by boats," he says, before finally being rescued himself.
"Food, clothes, everything was taken away, even our crops in the fields," he continues.
And relief expects to discover further significant damage in areas still inaccessible. "Without help, people will starve. We urgently need food, everything they had has been washed away," warned Paul Ndamera, a disaster management official.
"Carried away by the wind"
The storm, which formed last week east of Madagascar, triggered heavy rains on the Big Island, causing flooding and landslides. Forty-eight people were killed there, 130,000 are affected. At least 72,000 people lost their homes.
In the Malagasy capital Antananarivo, gymnasiums and schools have been requisitioned and transformed into emergency accommodation. About 20,000 people had started returning home on Friday.
Upon their return, some dug through the mud and rubble to salvage a few items, building makeshift shelters with the remains of their homes.
After crossing the Indian Ocean, Ana hit northern and central Mozambique where 18 deaths were reported. According to Unicef, 10,500 houses were damaged, as well as 12 health centers and 137 schools.
In the province of Nampula (north-east), Abdul Ibrahim, a 45-year-old fisherman, is sitting in front of a mosque: "I lost my fishing boat, it was blown away".
"I've never seen anything like that. It will be hard to get over it," he adds.
A refugee in a school, Maria Jose, in her thirties, made a bed for her two children, aged 2 and 5, on the floor of a classroom: "The winds have taken away my house, I have nothing left".
After a visit to the region, Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario said he was shocked to see that even recent bridges had collapsed.
A bridge, rebuilt in 2020, after being washed away the previous year, was destroyed again, he said.
"We need to supervise the works better. The government cannot build weak infrastructure" and "shouldn't have to rebuild the same infrastructure every year," he said.
Four to six cyclones are expected in the region by the end of March, the end of the rainy season. A new tropical storm has already formed in the Indian Ocean: Batsirai is expected to reach Mauritius on Wednesday.
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