Mozambique: Cyclone Gombe causes damage in Nampula – photos

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Mozambique: Cyclone Gombe causes damage in Nampula – photos

2:52 CAT | 11 Mar 2022

Illustrative photo: Fiscal de Moçambique on Facebok

The inhabitants of Mutotope, on the outskirts of Nampula city, Nampula province, northern Mozambique, the country’s most populous province, woke up today with the neighbourhood cut in half by a river fed by Cyclone Gombe.

According to the residents, some houses of traditional material collapsed with the force of the rain and the wind that started blowing at dawn and has not yet shown signs of easing, as they try to overcome the waters that occupy the usual footpaths.

Crops are bending before the gusts of wind, and there are flooded areas.

The Mutotope quarter is one of those that show signs of damage since the early hours of the morning, but also closer to the centre of Nampula, in the Muhala-Expansão quarter, the open space that vendors usually occupy is today deserted and flooded.

Still, it is feared that the most significant damage caused by Cyclone Gombe is in the coastal areas, where the storm came ashore with greater intensity during the darkness of dawn, between the villages of Mogincual and Terrene, 50 kilometres south of Mozambique Island.

“The districts remained uncontactable”, and civil protection teams are still unable to move into the field due to lack of security conditions, as the cyclone remains active, said an official source from the National Emergency Operating Centre (Cenoe).

“The phenomenon continues to buffet the districts, there is no power, there are no communications via telephone, and that is what is hindering information on the real impact” of the storm, he added.

Teams from the National Institute of Disaster Management (INGD) are ready to await “guidance from the National Institute of Meteorology (INAM) that they can go into the field.

Storm Gombe reached the Mozambican coast at 03:00 (01:00 in Lisbon) as an intense cyclone with torrential rain and wind of 165 kilometres per hour, with gusts exceeding 200, the French weather centre on Reunion island announced.

The area remains under cyclonic rain and wind as the storm moves towards Nampula, the provincial capital, 150 kilometres inland.

Storm Gombe hit Mozambique two years after cyclones Idai and Kenneth battered the central and northern regions of the country in what was one of the most severe rainy seasons in living memory.