Cyclone Freddy teaches deadly lessons on storm warnings, city sprawl
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[March 20, 2023]
By Frank Phiri, Manuel Mucari and Carien du Plessis
BLANTYRE/MAPUTO (Reuters) - Days before Cyclone Freddy struck Mozambique
on March 11 for the second time, cars with loudhailers moved through the
streets of the port town of Quelimane warning residents to move to
shelters on higher ground with stocks of food and water.
Most people heeded the warnings, knowing from bitter experience the
damage such storms could inflict: 600 people had died in Cyclone Idai in
2019.
"Local authorities came around my neighbourhood to alert us of the
imminent danger. They blew the whistle," recalled 31-year-old Quelimane
resident Amelia Antonio.
Those preparations helped save lives in one of the strongest storms ever
to hit Africa.
Mozambique has so far recorded 76 deaths, a relatively low toll compared
with previous such disasters.
The storm was far more deadly in neighbouring Malawi, where at least 447
were killed as Freddy tore through the country's southern tip and
inundated the main commercial hub of Blantyre.
There, warnings were inconsistent and often unheeded by residents, many
of whom told Reuters they did not know where to go if they did leave
their homes.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/20/images/ads/current/lccpreschool_lda_031423.png)
Mozambique and Malawi are among the poorest 8% of countries in the
world, according to United Nations data. Over half the population in
each country live below the poverty line.
The contrast between what happened in the two southern African nations
holds lessons for a world where global warming and population growth
have produced burgeoning shanty towns vulnerable to the destructive
storms that climate change fuels.
As these storms get stronger, sophisticated warning systems of the sort
Mozambique now uses will be required, and swollen cities like Blantyre
will have to address the scourge of unplanned slums that rapid
urbanisation is creating.
'PEOPLE WERE CLIMBING TREES'
"What remains of my house is just sticks standing," Antonio told Reuters
in a telephone interview on Thursday. "If I'd been there, I don't know
what would have happened."
She avoided physical harm thanks to a community-based early warning
system in Mozambique, which delivers text messages and announcements on
local radio and TV. She was instructed to seek shelter at a local
school, where she is still sleeping.
"It is a very structured (warning) system ... down to village level,"
said Myrta Kaulard, United Nations resident coordinator for Mozambique.
"People had to move to the shelters and this ... saved a lot of lives."
In Malawi, too, warnings were sounded as the storm moved inland. But a
lot of people did not get them, including Madalo Makawa, a resident of
Chilobwe, a densely populated township of Blantyre that was one of the
hardest hit by the storm.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/20/images/ads/current/ldn_sda_KAREN_012823.png)
"We just saw water and rocks coming down the mountains and we started
running," she said. "People were shouting for help, others were climbing
trees."
Others, like Yohane Simbi, said they were not told where to seek
shelter, and so many stayed home.
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![](../images/032023PIX/news_d52.jpg)
Members of the Malawian Army and locals
help the community to recover bodies of victims in Chimwankhunda
township in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Freddy in Blantyre,
Malawi, March 17, 2023. REUTERS/Esa Alexander
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/20/images/ads/current/graue_lda_ENCOREpreowned_020723.jpg)
Chilobwe lies below a mountain with thousands of makeshift shelters,
often mud structures with tin roofs that were flattened by mudslides
and falling rocks. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of
Malawians in the country's four cities live in informal houses, U.N.
Habitat data from 2020 shows.
Simbi's house was partially destroyed, but he survived.
"Malawi ... normally floods on lower ground," Felix Washon from the
Malawi Red Cross Society told Reuters from Blantyre. This means
anyone in the hills thought they were safe despite radio, TV and
social media messages warning them of the storm.
"During the mudslides ... water broke away from the mountains," he
said. "This has never happened in recent times."
As he visited the area of Blantyre hit by the storm, Natural
Resources Minister Michael Usi described it as a "national tragedy",
but said people had been warned to relocate.
Officials in Malawi's disaster management affairs department did not
immediately respond to queries on evacuation orders and whether
shelters were set up before the storm hit.
BIGGER TOWNS, STRONGER STORMS
Scientists say climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels
is making tropical storms stronger.
The ocean has absorbed much of the warming caused by heat-trapping
gases. This additional heat can fuel a storm's intensity and power
stronger winds. In the case of Freddy, this extra energy allowed the
storm to pick up strength again and circle back to strike again.
At the same time, rapid population growth in the developing world
has pushed impoverished rural folk to seek opportunities in cities,
putting pressure on housing in places like Blantyre, which has a
population of about a million.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/20/images/ads/current/railer_norapeters_sda_LCHSBOARD_2023.png)
"People are coming from the rural areas ... to find jobs, but when
they don't get jobs, they don't go back, they settle in the fragile
areas," said Costly Chanza, director of town planning and estates
services at the Blantyre City Council.
Much of the construction in the hilly areas around Blantyre flouts
planning regulations, he added, but efforts to move people elsewhere
have failed as alternative plots were too far away from employment,
schools and hospitals.
Court orders blocking relocations have also thwarted the city's
efforts, Chanza said. He did not provide specific figures of how
many people need to be relocated.
Deforestation - often to make charcoal in places with no electricity
- added to the disaster, as it loosens soil, creating the right
conditions for mudslides, Chanza said.
In addition, weak building materials like mud and iron sheets made
houses more prone to collapse, said Estere Tsoka, emergency
specialist at U.N. children's agency UNICEF in Malawi.
(Reporting by Frank Phiri and Eldson Chagara in Blantyre, Carien du
Plessis and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo in Johannesburg; Manuel Mucari in
Maputo; Writing by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Tim Cocks and
Ros Russell)
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