Cyclone Favio Comes Ashore in Mozambique Killing Four

Officials from Mozambique said Friday that four people had been killed, and at least seventy more injured, in the resort town of Villanculos, due to Cyclone Favio. The storm, which was downgraded to a tropical storm as the wind speeds dropped dramatically, could still be cause for concern, officials said, due to the strong rains from the storm. It was feared the rain would worsen an area already hit hard by flooding.

Forecasters predict the storm, even having been downgraded, will continue to bring rain and damaging winds to nearby Sofala, Inhambane and Gaza provinces. "It's still taking the same direction and it's not as powerful as it was a few hours ago... but the rains can still impact on the flooding situation," said Mozambique's national weather agency spokesman, Helder Suela, in a Reuters interview.

"Four people were killed, seventy others seriously injured, and some two thousand homes were destroyed," said Villanculos Mayor Selmane Amugy in a phone interview with Reuters. "There are no words to describe the drama. I haven't seen such a thing in my life."

The mayor went on to describe some of the events from the two days, since Cyclone Favio came ashore. "All six hundred prisoners escaped when the local jail was destroyed and we had to evacuate some one hundred twenty patients from the rural hospital."

And this not be the end for the beleaguered area that has already seen thirty people killed and ninety thousand more rendered homeless due to recent flooding. A second storm, Cyclone Gamede, is already threatening to come ashore in nearly the same spot.

"I can't do anything because all the roads have been blocked by falling trees and it's even impossible to try and rescue the people whose homes have been hit because there is no access," Mayor Amugy said.

A nearby tourist spot, Bazaruto Island, is still cut off from comminications as the regional electricity grid was destroyed in the storm, but emergency medical personnel, engineers and technicians had been sent to survey the storm damage.