Mozambique races to save stranded survivors

BEIRA, Mozambique: Rescue workers in Mozambique were on Tuesday racing to pluck people out of trees and off rooftops after a monster storm which officials fear claimed more than 1,000 lives before smashing into Zimbabwe.

Four days after Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall, torrential rains, powerful winds and flash flooding swept away roads and bridges, inflicting further pain on the two impoverished nations.

More than a thousand people are feared to have died in Mozambique alone while scores have been killed and more than 200 are missing in neighbouring Zimbabwe following the deadliest cyclone to hit southern Africa.

Emergency teams in central Mozambique set off in boats to chart an inland sea of floodwater, rescuing survivors from roofs and treetops in an operation which stretched long into the night. Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa were drafted in to fly rescue missions, while an NGO called Rescue South Africa said it had picked up 34 people since Friday night, using three helicopters.

"It is the only way to access the people that are stranded," Rescue SA’s Abrie Senekal told AFP, saying the NGO was trying to source more helicopters. Ian Scher, who heads Rescue SA, said the rescue teams were having to make difficult decisions. "Sometimes we can only save two out of five, sometimes we drop food and go to someone else who’s in bigger danger," he said.

"There’s two issues at the same time: people stranded in trees, and people stranded on houses or new islands that have no food," he explained. Those stuck up trees were having to deal with snakes, insects and other wildlife sheltering there, he said.

"We just save what we can save and the others will perish." In Nhamatanda, some 60 kilometres northwest of Beira, 27-year-old Jose Batio and his wife and children survived by climbing onto a roof.