Freight still moving after deadly Malawi floods

In what is likely to be one of 2015’s
deadliest natural disasters, the two
weeks of cyclonic rainstorms which
have hit Malawi and Mozambique
and triggered rampaging f loods,
have had no major impact on
freight road transport in the two
nations, according Barney Curtis,
CEO of the Federation of East and
Southern African Road Transport
Associations (Fesarta).
Not that Fesarta is denying that it
has been a devastating event.
The death toll from flooding in
the central and northern parts of
Mozambique was reckoned to be
71 at the beginning of last week,
according to that country’s National
Institute of Disaster Management.
Also, about 80 000 people had been
rendered homeless by the f loods.
Meanwhile, across the border in
Malawi, 176 people had been killed
and 200 000 displaced by f loods.
And, according to Dr Jeff
Masters’ “Weather Underground”
website, the international disaster
database EM-DAT reported that
only one other f lood disaster has
killed more people in Malawi: the
f loods of March 10, 1991, with a
death toll of 472.
That ’91 f lood was also the most
expensive weather-related natural
disaster in Malawi’s history, with
damages estimated at US$24m.
“The f loods of 2015 may be
ten times more expensive,” said
EM-DAT, with Malawi having
already requested humanitarian
assistance of US$430m for recovery
efforts.
But, although numbers of roads
have been damaged, and bridges
and causeways washed away in
both countries, Fesarta has had no
incoming reports of badly disrupted
truck traffic.
“It must be moving, or we would
have heard,” Curtis told FTW.
The only logical explanation,
he added, is that the main trunk
routes across both countries are
probably built on a higher level
than the stretches of ground prone
to f looding – many of which are
alongside main rivers.