As Cyclone Eloise caused less damage than feared, people in the Mozambican port city of Beira breathed a sigh of relief on Saturday, although the possibility of flooding remained in a region still recovering from a devastating cyclone two years ago.
In 2019, several hundred people were killed and over 100,000 others were displaced by Cyclone Idai.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned before Cyclone Eloise’s arrival that at least 100,000 people would be affected.
“There have been floods, but we have been kind of lucky that the speed of the wind has not been as high as we were anticipating. As you can imagine, there is a high wind. It usually brings a lot of destruction. So, comparatively, this has been milder. However, there has been a lot of water on the ground, so the floods have been there and the telecommunication system has been disrupted”, said Gorkhmaz Huseynov, the head of the Mozambican Red Cross.
Before dawn on Saturday, the eye of the storm passed over Beira, having already brought heavy rains to Zambezia province and its capital, Quelimane.
After landfall, the cyclone lost power but took out electricity and communications networks in Beira, a town of about half a million people, and surrounding areas.
According to Africanews, electric company EDM said that after water got into a substation in Beira, it had switched off power as a precautionary measure.
Eloise is the second cyclone, after Chalane in December, to strike central Mozambique this season.
