Tropical Cyclone Idai — Floods in Mozambique Lead the News

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Some head­lines from NPR, BBC, and Axios fol­low­ing his­toric floods in the South­ern Africa region.

The nation of Mozam­bique in South-East­ern Africa suf­fered cat­a­stroph­ic dam­ages fol­low­ing what is being described as a Trop­i­cal Cyclone Idai start­ing on March 4.  The storms inten­si­fied there­after, con­tin­u­ing into the week of March 18, leav­ing many deaths and plen­ty of destruc­tion, includ­ing sub­merged buildings.

Accord­ing to News24, “Trop­i­cal cyclone Idai has made head­lines across south­ern Africa through­out the month of March. Lin­ger­ing in the Mozam­bique Chan­nel at trop­i­cal cyclone inten­si­ty for six days, the storm made land­fall in Beira, Mozam­bique in the mid­dle of the month, then tracked in a west­er­ly direc­tion until its dissipation.”

Here is a look at how the floods were report­ed in media in the Unit­ed States and around the world.

03/23/19

British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) pos­es an impor­tant ques­tion, ask­ing whether the South­ern African nations impact­ed by the Cyclone; Mozam­bique, Malawi, Zim­bab­we, and South Africa, were pre­pared for it.

In a “real­i­ty check” report BBC reporters raised ques­tions about how Mozam­bique was going to deal with the dev­as­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly when the coun­try was fac­ing eco­nom­ic strains fol­low­ing a 2016 loan deal that went bad.

03/23/19    

Accord­ing to Nation­al Pub­lic Radio (NPR News) the death toll climbed to more than 600 peo­ple. Cit­ing sources on the ground in Mozam­bique, includ­ing human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions; UNICEF, The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of the Red Cross and Red Cres­cent Soci­eties, the NPR report states the extend of the storms as “stag­ger­ing.”

03/22/19

In this pho­to­graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion Vox shows what hap­pened as the cat­a­stro­phe unfold­ed, how those affect­ed attempt­ed escape, and the res­cue mis­sions that followed.

03/20/19

Mean­while, Newsweek mag­a­zine pro­vides this opin­ion from Hazel Nyathi, who has worked in the inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment sec­tor for more than 23 years, about what the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must do to help the situation.

The opin­ion piece from Nyathi states that “Over­all, more than 822,000 peo­ple have been affect­ed in the coun­try. Entire vil­lages have been washed away. Infra­struc­tures have col­lapsed, hin­der­ing relief efforts. Schools have been destroyed and peo­ple have resort­ed to tak­ing shel­ter on rooftops and trees, wait­ing for the mil­i­tary to evac­u­ate them.

Nyathai says “So we call on the rest of the world to do every­thing it can to help us. These peo­ple need us. And they need us now.”

03/19/19

Bloomberg News report­ed that parts of the coun­try were sub­merged beneath water and that the storm had dis­rupt­ed fuel sup­plies to neigh­bor­ing Zim­bab­we as well as pow­er sup­ply to South Africa.