The humanitarian disaster in the southeastern African nation of Mozambique is a crisis of biblical proportions.
Mozambique was hit by two violent cyclones this month, Cyclone Idai flattened the densely populated central coast while Kenneth barreled over the less populated northern coast.
Today, the damaging winds of Kenneth and Idai are gone but, it is still raining heavily, bringing dangerous flash floods to areas already reeling from the Category 4 storms.
The two storms striking the region twice in one season is unprecedented.
“Help us, we are losing everything!” residents in Pemba city shouted at passing cars as the rushing waters poured into doorways. Women and girls with buckets and pots tried to scoop away the torrent, in vain. Some houses collapsed, the United Nations said.
“It’s an awful sense of deja vu,” said Nicholas Finney, response team leader with the aid group Save the Children. Kenneth arrived just six weeks after Cyclone Idai ripped into central Mozambique and killed more than 600 people with flooding.
This was the first time in recorded history that the southern African nation has been hit by two cyclones in one season, again raising concerns about climate change.
snip
xThis is just some of the damage Cyclone Kenneth brought to Mozambique.[Tap to expand] https://t.co/qN07PriqQhpic.twitter.com/Rx2265O1no
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 29, 2019Floods and rains that followed sent brown water coursing through the streets of the province’s main city Pemba on Sunday and submerged roads leading to remote areas to the north and south.
The Mozambican government has put the initial death count at five. But rescuers said there were fears for the safety thousands of families cut off after rivers burst their banks outside the city.
Flights and helicopters were currently grounded, making access “virtually impossible”, said Nicholas Finney from Save the Children.
xThis is #Pemba#Mozambiquenow. Masses of water flowing into the provincial capital after #CycloneKenneth .Rain continues! Search and Rescue Teams are urgently required! Source: Luiz Fernando Godinho, #UNHCRpic.twitter.com/HCtRPbSjDj
— NMacheroux-Denault (@NMacherouxD) April 28, 2019From Reuters:
Cyclone Kenneth first slammed into the province of Cabo Delgado late on Thursday, flattening entire villages with winds of up to 280 kph (174 mph) and storm surges - the second cyclone to hit the country in six weeks.
snip
Mozambique is still recovering from Cyclone Idai that hit further south last month and moved into neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi, killing more than 1,000 people.
It is the first time on record that two such powerful cyclones have hit Mozambique in so short a space of time.
Weather forecasters have warned that Kenneth could dump twice as much rain on northern Mozambique.
“It’s an awful sense of deja vu,” Save the Children’s Finney said. “The response for Cyclone Idai is already chronically underfunded and resources are stretched to the limit.”
Water is the most vicious weapon of climate change. Swollen rivers from rainfall is expected to overrun their banks and unleash a living hell on the survivors of Cyclone Kenneth.
x xYouTube VideoKenneth rapidly intensified from a Category 1- to a Category 4-equivalent tropical cyclone up until almost landfall between April 24-25.
Kenneth was the strongest cyclone strike in this part of Mozambique in recent memory. There is no record of a hurricane-strength tropical cyclone in Cabo Delgado Province in NOAA's historical database.
xVIDEO: Mozambique's Montepuez river is swollen after Cyclone Kenneth, raising fears of floods pic.twitter.com/rgZQUJ7kkW
— AFP news agency (@AFP) April 28, 2019Cyclone Victims Forced to Trade Sex for Food
The Mozambique authorities should urgently investigate and appropriately prosecute alleged sexual exploitation of Cyclone Idai victims by local officials, Human Rights Watch said today. Hunger and destruction caused by the cyclone have left hundreds of thousands of women vulnerable to abuse.
Victims, residents, and aid workers told Human Rights Watch that local community leaders, some linked to the ruling Frelimo party, demanded money from people affected by the cyclone in exchange for including their names on the aid distribution list. In some cases, women without money were instead coerced into engaging in sex with local leaders in exchange for a bag of rice.
“The sexual exploitation of women struggling to feed their families after Cyclone Idai is revolting and cruel and should be stopped immediately,” said Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should promptly investigate reports of women being coerced into exchanging sex for food and appropriately punish anyone using their position of power to exploit and abuse women.”
xMozambique situation 'worse than thought': UN agency https://t.co/m3bu7URHEC
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 28, 2019NASA’s Earth Observatory shares data on Cyclone Idai.
Tropical cyclones carry three major threats: winds, storm surge, and rainfall-triggered floods. All three landed devastating blows on Mozambique when Tropical Cyclone Idai came ashore on March 15, 2019, after taking a sharp turn in the Mozambique Channel a few days earlier.
The storm raked coastal cities and towns in Central Mozambique with winds of 175 kilometers (110 miles) per hour—strong enough to topple trees and tear the roofs from homes. But as is usually the case with tropical cyclones, water proved to be the most destructive. Idai made landfall around the time of high tide, so the storm pushed a tremendous wall of water ashore—a surge of up to 6 meters (20 feet) in some areas. The water swamped a large tract of low-lying land along the Pungwe River. Meanwhile, as the large, slow-moving storm moved inland, it dumped extremely heavy rain on much of Mozambique’s Manica and Sofala provinces.
snip
The storm surge and rains combined to turn the Pungwe Basin into an inland sea. Entire communities south of the Pungwe River appeared to be under water. Farther north, the Zambezi River remained swollen because Idai essentially hit the area twice; heavy rain fell earlier in March from the tropical disturbance that later became Idai. One estimate, based on Sentinel-1 data acquired on March 19, indicated that water covered roughly 2,165 square kilometers (835 square miles) of eastern Africa, an area half the size of Rhode Island.
snip
While the worst of the floodwaters have begun to subside, observers expect this catastrophe will continue to unfold for several weeks and months. Rain continues to fall in many areas, and some places remain inaccessible because of flooding and damaged infrastructure, making it difficult for rescuers to provide help. In many areas, clean water is scarce, and unsanitary conditions have increased the risk of disease. With vast tracts of wheat and other crops destroyed by floodwaters, food shortages could become a problem in the coming weeks and months.
The increases in extreme wave height are less uniform than the winds. In addition to increases in the Southern Ocean, the heights of extreme waves are also increasing in the North Atlantic. The rate of increase in wind speed and wave height is shown in the graphs above. Although increases of 5 percent. The increased sea level just makes these wind and wave events more serious and more frequent. Increases in wave height and other properties such as wave direction will further increase the probability of coastal flooding. Changes like these will also cause enhanced coastal erosion, putting at risk coastal settlements and infrastructure. for waves and 8 percent for winds may not seem like much, if sustained into the future such changes to our climate will have major ramifications. The potential impacts of climate-induced sea level rises are well known. What most people don’t understand is that the actual flooding events are caused by storm surges and breaking waves associated with storms. University of Melbourne