AFP: Cyclone Freddy, which dissipated this week after a record-breaking rampage, has caused more than 460 deaths in southern Africa and affected more than half a million people in Malawi, the UN said yesterday.
The storm dumped six months’ worth of rainfall in six days in southern Malawi, leaving a trail of destruction and severely damaged infrastructure as well as flooding farmland. “Over 500,000 people have been affected,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report, adding that more than 183,100 people had been displaced.
Some 360 people have died in Malawi, according to the latest toll released late Friday, in a country of nearly 20 million people.”We expect that the picture of damage and death will worsen as more areas become accessible over time,” President Lazarus Chakwera, who is on a three-day visit to the affected areas, said.
The OCHA said that “the record-breaking weather system hit Malawi at the end of the rainy season when rivers and water bodies were already at high levels”. UN World Food Programme (WFP) country director Paul Turnbull said yesterday it was clear that the country “will need significant support”. Many areas were rendered inaccessible, “restricting movement of assessment and humanitarian teams and life-saving supplies”, he said.
“We are ramping up as quickly as we can under the circumstances,” he added in a statement, vowing to assist around 130,000 people affected by the “tragic” situation.