Death toll from Freddy, one of the longest-lasting cyclones ever, jumps to 190 in Malawi | CBC News

Tropical storm Freddy, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the southern hemisphere, has killed 190 people in Malawi after ripping through southern Africa for the second time in a month, Malawi’s disaster management agency said on Tuesday.

The commercial hub of Blantyre was the hardest hit district, and severe flooding and rains have broken roads and bridges, hampering relief operations.

Freddy has also left a trail of destruction in Mozambique after it made landfall for the second time over the weekend.

The death toll in Malawi has jumped to 190 from the 99 reported on Monday, the Department of Disaster Management Affairs said.

Rescue operations difficult

As heavy rains continued to pummel the country, 584 people have been injured and 37 are still missing, the department said in a statement.

Families in Blantyre were counting the cost of the storm as they waited to collect the dead bodies of relatives from the 
Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital mortuary.

The flooding and rains have hit rescue operations and 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 bringing widespread flooding around the port of Quelimane, before moving inland toward Malawi with torrential rains that caused landslides.

The full extent of the damage and loss of life in Mozambique is not yet clear. 

It’s the second time the record-breaking cyclone — which has been causing destruction in southern Africa since late February — made landfall in mainland Africa. It also pummelled the island states of Madagascar and Reunion as it traversed the ocean.

The cyclone, which formed in the first week of February, has intensified a record seven times and has the highest-ever recorded accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, which is a measurement of how much energy a cyclone has released over time. Freddy recorded more energy over its lifetime than an entire typical U.S. hurricane season.

Freddy first developed near Australia in early February and travelled across the entire southern Indian Ocean. It’s set to be the longest-ever recorded tropical cyclone. The UN’s weather agency has convened an expert panel to determine whether it has broken the record of 31 days set by Hurricane John in 1994.