Women in a Mozambican resettlement camp raise their hands to indicate they had no warning that Cyclone Idai was about to strike

By Denis McClean

GENEVA, 4 October, 2019 - There is a striking contrast between the death toll in India and Mozambique from two equally strong cyclones this year.

Pre-emptive evacuation of a million people before Cyclone Fani made landfall on the coast of Odisha, ensured that deaths from the category 5 storm were kept at a reported 72. Warnings were well disseminated and most people in harm’s way managed to get to a safe place.

In Mozambique things did not go so smoothly.

Pre-emptive evacuations were not the norm as Cyclone Idai bore down on coast of Sofala province and travelled inland across Manica province. The official death toll of 605 may be a significant underestimate given the lack of registration of births and other means of verifying the true death toll.

Evidence taken from women in two resettlement camps indicates that very few heard the early warnings on radio or television and the few who did ignored them as unreliable or simply because they had no idea what to do.

It is clear from talking to these women in the protected spaces provided to them by UNFPA that while many of them believe that the climate is changing and see the impact on their farming activities, they have little or no understanding of how to prepare for, or respond to, sudden on-set, life-threatening natural hazards like Cyclone Idai which struck in March or Cyclone Kenneth which struck in April.

At a meeting of some 90 women in Mandruzi resettlement camp, Dondo, Sofala – home to 375 families – only 12 hands went up to indicate that they had heard a warning about cyclone Idai.

Doca Bande (32) received a phone text from an uncle but she chose to go a cultural activity in her community and found that it had been cancelled. “The community leader said ‘you want to dance when the cyclone is coming?’” She eventually escaped the cyclone’s wrath by taking her six children to a nearby school.