The death toll from Cyclone Freddy exceeded 220 as of Tuesday, March 14, after the devastating storm triggered floods and landslides in Malawi and Mozambique.
Rescue workers in the two affected countries warned that more victims were likely as they scrubbed destroyed neighbourhoods to look for the survivors.
The dangerous storm hit south-eastern Africa at the weekend, its second landfall since the late month of February after fermenting off Australia and crossing over the Indian Ocean.
Malawi’s government said in a statement that at least 190 people were killed with 584 injured and 37 missing, while Authorities in neighbouring Mozambique reported 20 deaths and 24 injured following the deadly incident.
“There are many casualties, either wounded, missing, or dead, and the numbers will only increase in the coming days.” the emergency project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Malawi Guilherme Botelho said.
Many people lost their lives in mudslides that washed away homes in the country’s business capital of Blantyre.
Nearly 59,000 people have been affected and more than 19,000 displaced, with many safeguarded in schools and places of worship, especially in churches.
Freddy was still causing localized rains and winds in southern Malawi on Tuesday, but conditions were expected to ease from Wednesday evening, according to the country’s Meteorological Service.
In Chilobwe, a township outside Blantyre, dazed survivors observed compressed houses and other structures as the heavy rain continued to fall.
Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera, who returned to the country on Tuesday after attending a United Nations (UN) conference in Qatar, bombarded the relief efforts with volunteers.
The storm Cyclone Freddy reached landlocked Malawi early on Monday after sweeping through Mozambique at the weekend.
Cyclone Freddy has unofficially broken the World Meteorological Organization’s specification as the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record, set in 1994 for a 31-day storm named John.
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Freddy became a named storm on 6 February, making landfall in Madagascar on 21 February and sweeping over the island before reaching Mozambique on 24 February.
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It then returned to the Indian Ocean and collected strong energy over its warm waters, before reversing course to come back much more powerful at the weekend, packing wind squall of up to 200 km/h (125mph), according to Emmanuel Cloppet of the Mateo-France Weather Service.
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Meteorologists say that cyclones tracking across the entire Indian Ocean are very infrequent – the last occurred in 2000 and that Freddy’s loop-back was even more exceptional.
The cyclone has piled more woes on Malawi, already grappling with the deadliest cholera outbreak in its history, which has killed more than 1,600 people since last year.
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