The National Institute for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (INGD) admitted on Wednesday 12 March that it does not have enough air resources to reach people living in the interior of Nampula province, pointing out that people remain isolated due to the floods caused by the passage of tropical cyclone Jude.
‘We have a challenge related to surveying the damage at district level (…) to mobilise air resources to speed up assistance to families under siege,’ explained the president of INGD, Luísa Meque.
After visiting the Emergency Operation Centre in Nampula, she acknowledged that the reports point to ‘some areas that are not accessible at the moment’, admitting that the local authorities don’t have the means to reach the most affected communities, namely on Ilha de Moçambique and in the Angoche district, considered the most critical.
Storm Jude caused the deaths of six people who, according to Luísa Meque, are related to the collapse of walls and houses. ‘Resilient housing is a big challenge and we really need to make these training programmes have some effect, so that families know how to rebuild their homes.’
The bad weather caused by the cyclone affected more than 9,000 people, corresponding to 1,863 families, totally and partially destroying 1,899 houses, as well as nine health centres, four houses of worship and one public building.
By Tuesday, according to the INGD survey, the weather phenomenon had also affected more than 17,000 students, 264 teachers, 59 schools and 181 classrooms in the provinces of Nampula, Niassa and Zambézia.
The National Meteorological Institute said that tropical cyclone Jude entered Mozambique through the district of Mossuril, in Nampula, with winds of 140 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 195 kilometres per hour.
Mozambique is in the middle of the rainy season, which runs from October to April, a period in which cyclones Chido and Dikeledi have already been recorded. These phenomena affected more than 700,000 people and destroyed public and private infrastructure.
The country is considered one of the most severely affected by global climate change, facing cyclical floods and tropical cyclones during the rainy season, but also prolonged periods of severe drought.
