The storm’s deadly path

Idai first hit Mozambique on 4 March as a tropical depression with torrential rain that also affected southern Malawi. It then changed course, moving back over the sea where the storm strengthened to a cyclone with the equivalent force of a category 3 hurricane.

When Idai made landfall for the second time on 14 March it brought winds of up to 115 mph/185 kph and more than 150mm of rain in 24 hours to the city of Beira and nearby Buzi district. It then swept inland and on to Zimbabwe.

A city marooned

Satellite imagery shows the extent of flooding around Beira. In total, the satellite picked up flooded areas measuring around 2,165 km2.

According to the Red Cross, up to 90% of Beira, Mozambique’s fourth largest city, has been damaged or destroyed. The devastated city is now effectively an island amid the flooded area with communications, power and clean water severely disrupted or non-existent.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A local paddles past a woman at her home during floods after Cyclone Idai, in Buzi district, outside Beira. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Trapped above an inland lake

The huge flooded area includes some of the most densely populated districts in Mozambique. Houses, roads and crops have disappeared beneath water that is six metres (19ft) deep in places. Rescuers are struggling to reach survivors who may have spent up to a week sheltering on roofs and in trees.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says at least 600,000 people have been affected, ranging from those whose lives are in immediate danger to those who need other kinds of aid.

The areas hardest hit by the floods have been the coastal lowlands, which lie in between the higher plateau and mountainous areas to the west near the Zimbabwean border, and the Mozambique Channel to the east.

Zimbabwe not spared

More than 200,000 people have been affected by the cyclone in Zimbabwe, according to the World Food Programme.

In Chimanimani, close to Zimbabwe’s border with Mozambique, 90% of the district has been significantly damaged, the WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel said.

Roads have been gobbled up by massive sinkholes and bridges ripped to shreds by flash floods – a landscape that Zimbabwe’s acting defence minister, Perence Shiri, who is also agriculture minister, said “resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war”.