Tropical Cyclone Kenneth made landfall in Mozambique Thursday, April 25th (image above from EOSDIS via NASA). The Joint Typhoon Warning Center says Kenneth had maximum wind speeds of 140 miles per hour at landfall. That's equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane! On Monday the government in Mozambique reported 38 deaths from Kenneth. An additional four deaths were reported on the island of Comoros, which is northeast off the coast of Mozambique. CNN reports this is the strongest storm to hit this region since record keeping began.
Mission Aviation Fellowship was one of the first relief teams in the area and one of the first to do an aerial survey of the damage. All the pictures and videos in this post are from Mission Aviation Fellowship and used with their permission, unless otherwise noted.
SLIDESHOW | Damage in Mozambique from Tropical Cyclone Kenneth
Laura Hibberd with the Mission Aviation Fellowship disaster response team, said, “It rained all night [Saturday] in Pemba. Today [Sunday] began with a thunderstorm around 6 a.m. And when I say rain ... I don't mean drizzle. I mean buckets worth of water falling from the sky."
In another report she added, “6:30 a.m. Sunday – Rick Emenaker and Dave Holmes departed our hotel for the airport. They arrived at the airport only to find it deserted, appeared to not have power, and the parking lots and the area around the buildings being used to coordinate the response were covered in 5+ inches of water."
