Cyclones Chalane and Eloise

Written by Tawnya Weaver

The start of this year has been an interesting one- in December 2020 our community got word of a Cyclone Lingering off the coast of Madagascar and immediately people bean to panic. Most people are still walking in a lot of lingering trauma from Cyclone Idai which made land fall March 14th 2019 as a category 4.

Cyclone Chalane didn't intensify as suspected and only caused minor damage to our community, however father out into the bush and closer to the epicenter Chalane caused damage to some of our bush churches.

One tree on our property fell onto a house in the village, we were able to reconstruct it and gave the woman an even better house than what was damaged.

A few weeks later cyclone Eloise was gain lingering off the coast of Madagascar, the community was scrambling to prepare their roofs once again, we knew that Eloise would arrive with a lot of rain. Even before Eloise made landfall on January 23rd there were villages submerged in water. This was a huge problem because with the amount of rain that we expected from Eloise it would flood even more that Idai did in 2019.

Cyclone Eloise made land fall as a Category 2 cyclone and cause sever flooding in a few areas in Sofala Province.

Eloise killed at least nine people in Mozambique. The storm displaced at least 8,000 individuals across the country. Farm tools and seeds were destroyed. On 27 January, an estimated 74 health centers and 322 classrooms were damaged or destroyed. On 28 January, the number of houses affected rose to a total of 20,558. 6,297 were destroyed, 11,254 were damaged, and 3,007 were flooded. The number climbed to 29,310 houses, with 17,738 destroyed, 8,565 damaged, and 3,007 flooded. The number kept rising for classrooms and health centers; with 579 and 86 in need of repairs respectively. (from UNOSTAT/Wikipedia).

We will start to do some relief efforts in harvest hit ares where food distributions are needed immediately. Along with some house re builds and church repairs.

You can donate to Iris Globals Crisis Relief if you feel led. All finances are used through Iris Global to help in times of needs.