People walk between washed away structures in the Malawi city of Blantyre on 14 March 2023, caused by heavy rains following cyclone Freddy's landfall. Photo: AFP
Cyclone Freddy, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, has killed 190 people in Malawi after ripping through southern Africa for the second time in a month.
The district around the commercial hub of Blantyre was among the hardest-hit. Severe flooding and rain damaged roads and bridges, hampering relief operations.
Freddy has also left a trail of destruction in Mozambique, where it made landfall over the weekend. More than 22,000 people there were seeking shelter away from their homes.
The latest death toll in Malawi was a jump from 99 reported on Monday, the Department of Disaster Management Affairs said.
As heavy rains continued to pummel the country, 584 people have been injured and 37 were still missing, it said in a statement.
Grief-stricken families were seen waiting to collect the dead bodies of relatives from the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital mortuary in Blantyre.
Mudslides triggered by heavy rain have made it difficult to get relief to those affected, aid agencies said.
"It's a challenging operation in the sense that there's been incidents of mudslides and so people are getting stuck in those mud accumulations," said Estere Tsoka, emergency specialist at UN children's agency UNICEF in Malawi.
"People are trying to find a place to hang in there for some time."
Freddy pummelled central Mozambique on Saturday, ripping roofs off buildings and causing widespread flooding around the port of Quelimane before moving inland towards Malawi.
The full extent of the damage and loss of life in Mozambique was still becoming clear, but the overall death toll was now estimated at more than 220 in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar since Freddy first made landfall in February.
Alcidio Benjamim, a provincial manager for humanitarian organisation ForAfrika in Mozambique, told Reuters that Sofala and Zambezia provinces were badly affected in the latest hit. He said 22,000 people or 4000 families were seeking shelter in Zambezia province at accommodation centres as of Monday.
"We are expecting that (those) numbers will increase because there are inaccessible areas due to the floods. Some vehicles can't go through the roads," Benjamim said.
Freddy could sweep through Zambezia province again, bringing more wind and rain. "We will know by tomorrow morning if it's more intense or not," Benjamim added.
Cyclone Freddy pounding the city of Quelimane in Mozambique on 12 March 2023 and causing severe damage to infrastructures, trees, power, and communication. Photo: AFP / UNICEF / Afredo Zuniga
Why is Cyclone Freddy a record-breaking storm?
Tropical cyclone Freddy hit the coast of southern Africa for a second time over the weekend, bringing its total death toll to more than 220 people in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar.
The month-long storm has broken at least one record and could break two more, meteorologists say.
As climate change causes warmer oceans, heat energy from the water's surface was fuelling stronger storms.
Below are some of the main reasons Freddy was noteworthy.
Highest cyclone energy
Freddy holds the record for most accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), a measure based on a storm's wind strength over its lifetime, of any storm in the southern hemisphere and possibly worldwide.
Freddy has generated about as much accumulated cyclone energy as an average full North Atlantic hurricane season, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
By last week it was in second place for the most accumulated cyclone energy of any storm since 1980, with the record held by Hurricane and Typhoon Ioke in 2006.
Some estimates show that Freddy has since broken that record, with 86 ACE compared to Ioke's 85 ACE.
Record length
Freddy may have broken the record for longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
The current record is held by a 31-day hurricane in 1994.
Freddy first developed on 6 February and made its second landfall on the coast of Mozambique on 11 March, 34 days later.
However, experts still have to look at several factors, such as the fact that it weakened below tropical cyclone status at some points during that time, in order to determine whether it broke the record, the World Meteorological Organization said.
Most cycles of intensification
Freddy appears to have broken the world record for the most bouts of rapid intensification, defined as an increase in wind speed of 35 miles per hour (56km/h) in a period of 24 hours.
Freddy had seven separate cycles of rapid intensification, according to satellite estimates, the World Meteorological Organization said. The previous record was four, which was reached by several hurricanes.
The World Meteorological Organization will set up an expert committee to examine this record, as well as the others, it said.
Unusual path
Freddy developed off the coast of Australia, crossed the entire South Indian Ocean and travelled more than 8000km to make landfall in Madagascar and Mozambique in late February.
It then looped back and hit the coast of Mozambique again two weeks later, before moving inland to Malawi.
"No other tropical cyclones observed in this part of the world have taken such a path across the Indian Ocean in the past two decades," said the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in an article.
Only four storms have crossed the southern Indian Ocean from east to west, with the last one in 2000, it said.
- Reuters
