The death toll from Cyclone Freddy, which broke up after massive flooding and landslides in southern Africa in mid-March, could top 1,200 in Malawi as hopes of survivors dwindle, state police and authorities said on Thursday.
The cyclone killed at least 676 people in Malawi, the epicenter of the disaster. And the country’s disaster management agency says the chances of finding the 538 missing have become woefully slim more than two weeks after the disaster.
Search operations with sniffer dogs are continuing in places, her manager Charles Kalemba said on Wednesday, but more in Blantyre, which was badly hit, “the team on site told us that they did their best”.
“Given the number of days that have passed, the chances of finding people alive are slim, so we will wait for the police to say when we can consider the missing dead,” he said.
This decision is still premature, police spokesman Harry Namwaza told the AFP news agency on Thursday. “The police and army are continuing the search. When we complete this process, the time will come to declare the missing dead.”
He did not go into the foreseeable duration of this research. “It’s hard to say because we’re still reaching some places that were previously inaccessible. There’s still a lot to do,” he added.
Forming off Australia in early February, the exceptionally long-lasting cyclone crossed the Indian Ocean an unprecedented distance of more than 8,000km east-west. Following a looping path rarely recorded by meteorologists, it first struck Madagascar and Mozambique in late February, then again in March those two countries and Malawi.
In addition to the heavy toll in Malawi, Freddy also killed 165 people in Mozambique and 17 others in Madagascar, according to the UN.