On Friday 14 March Cyclone Idai made landfall along the south-eastern coast of Africa. With sustained wind speeds of 120mph and heavy rain, it is now recognised as one of the most intense recorded weather events to hit the region. Many affected areas were already heavily waterlogged, making the overall effect even worse.

Hundreds of people are known to have died and hundreds of thousands of people to have been affected, with casualties across Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. Many people are without shelter, clean water or food and they need help urgently. The disaster has affected a wide area, and the exact scale and details are still being established.

MapAction has been asked to send a team.

MapAction has sent a three-person Emergency Response Team to Mozambique at the request of United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) Team. Our highly specialist team is working directly with UNDAC, at the heart of response planning and coordination, providing the vital situation maps and information management services needed by all agencies to get help to where it’s most needed, as quickly as possible. Additional expert MapAction team members will be travelling out to the disaster zone in the coming days.

In addition to our in-country team, our other technical volunteers, supported by specialist MapAction staff, have been working remotely on flood extent modelling and on gathering and sharing useful reference data to help response teams.

Why we need your help

MapAction is seen as a vital and trusted part of global humanitarian emergency response – it is hard to operate efficiently without up-to-the-minute situation maps. However we are also a charity, and we can’t help on missions like this one unless we can raise enough money to do so. Please make a donation and support our life saving work, for Cyclone Idai and future emergencies. Once the total costs of our response to this mission are covered, any additional funds raised will be used to make sure we are ready and able to attend future humanitarian response missions. MapAction’s maps and information products will enable many lives to be saved and reduce the suffering of those affected by this emergency and those to come.

Thank you in advance for any contribution you can make.