Búzi: Over 1,000 return to home areas

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Búzi: Over 1,000 return to home areas

2:11 CAT | 22 Apr 2019

Photo: O País

More than 1,000 people affected by Cyclone Idai and subsequent floods in Sofala’s Búzi district on Saturday began returning home, equipped with basic survival kits for the next 15 days.

Early in the afternoon of 17 March, the waters of the Búzi and Muda rivers in Sofala began to rise at astonishing speed, flooding large areas of the Nhamatanda and Búzi districts. Hundreds of families living on the banks of the rivers and nearby were caught by surprise and took shelter in trees and on roof-tops.

As a result of communications difficulties caused by Cyclone Idai’s landfall three days earlier, help only reached those affected at nightfall, and even then it was not possible to evacuate all the victims. Indeed, the process took three to four days, during which time more than 500 people fell into the waters and were swept away to their death.

Some of the surviving victims were accommodated by the INGC in the region of Guara-guara, about 20 kilometres from Búzi district village headquarters, while other families found shelter in Beira.

This Saturday, about a month later, the families started returning home, beginning with those accommodated in IFAPA, and supervised by the government, through the INGC, and with the support of the UN refugee agency.

Those concerned will in the first instance go to the accommodation centre in Guara-guara, since a significant number of those from the Búzi headquarters village no longer intend to live there again.

The UN refugee agency is supporting the return of those affected to their areas of origin and helping them re-establish their lives after the combined effects of the cyclone and floods.

The governor of Sofala, who accompanied the Buzi residents, asked them to continue standing in solidarity with each other, and his wife, a native of the Búzi district, spoke to them in the local language, saying that their recovery would demand individual and collective acts of solidarity.

“It’s harder to rebuild than it is to build. As you have done from the beginning, help yourselves, and may support come to complement your efforts. Only this way will we be able to overcome the misfortune that has hit our lives,” she said.

It is thought that the return process will take, in all, about a week.

By Francisco Raiva

ALSO READ: Mozambique after Cyclone Idai: ‘Some people have not eaten in weeks’

Source: O País