Cyclone Favio leaves destruction in Mozambique

MAPUTO (AFP) - Emergency workers Friday have surveyed damage to areas of Mozambique left devastated by Cyclone Favio, which left at least three people dead, scores and flattened most of the worst-hit town.

Red Cross spokesman Tapiwa Gomo said he had received differing reports that three or four people had been killed in and around the town of Vilankulo in Inhambane province.

"The situation is extremely bad, about 80 percent of the town has been destroyed. The local hospital, which has about 120 patients, was also destroyed," he told AFP.

Government and Red Cross teams were working together in Vilankulo, around 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of the capital Maputo, to move the patients into tents.

"The problem right now is that medicine in the hospital was affected, which means there is no medicine," said Gomo.

About 200 tents were being provided for those who had had the roofs of their houses blown off.

Items such as blankets were needed, Gomo added, while aid organisations went on evacuating people and assessing areas which would need assistance.

Meanwhile Favio was downgraded to a tropical depression.

"It is no longer a cyclone, it is now a tropical depression. The winds are strong, from 60 kilometers (37 miles) per hour to 80 kilometers per hour. It is travelling north-west to Zimbabwe," said Helder Sueia, chief forecaster in the national meteorological office.

He would not comment on the dangers of Cyclone Jumede, currently to the east of Mozambique, affecting the country.

Gomo said they were not yet worried about the possibility of a second cyclone as it was "still very far".

UN Childrens Fund spokesman Thierry Delvijne-Jean said emergency material that had been stored in a Maputo warehouse for victims of the flooding, such as chlorine, water, tarpaulin sheets and basic survival kits would be handed out to victims of the cyclone.

Favio was classified as a category four cyclone, which is one that can generate winds of around 200 kilometers an hour.

The cyclone adds to the strain on emergency workers already helping victims of recent flooding that left 80,000 people living alongside the Zambezi river homeless and around 30 dead.

Deluges in Mozambique in 2000-2001 claimed more than 700 lives. The southern African country's peak rainfall season is from the end of February to early March.

Indonesia to try to plug mud volcano with concrete balls

SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) -- An Indonesian official hit back at critics of a plan to control a gushing mud volcano by dropping concrete balls into its crater, saying something must be done to stop a nine-month-long eruption that has displaced 11,000 people.

A team of geologists and engineers hope the plan, believed to have never been tried before, will reduce the amount of mud flowing from the geyser at a gas exploration site on Java island by up to 70 percent. The mud is now surging out at a rate equivalent to about a million oil drums a day.

The plan follows an abandoned attempt to block the flow by pouring in concrete.

Critics have said they doubt the new attempt will work, and that it may be dangerous or cause the mud to flow out from different points.

"Those experts can say what they want, but we have to do something," said Rudi Novrianto, a spokesman for a government task force handling the disaster. "There is no time to debate and sit around."

The team had planned to begin releasing the balls on Friday, but were forced to postpone the operation until a later date -- possibly as soon as Saturday -- due to technical problems, he said.

Engineers will release five of the chained cement balls, each weighing up to 250 kilograms (550 pounds), and monitor the effect before gradually releasing more balls into the hole, Novrianto said.

He said laboratory tests by geologists at Indonesia's most respected university had indicated the plan will work.

Mud volcanoes are fairly common along volatile tectonic belts such as the one running below Indonesia, and in areas where there are rich oil and natural gas deposits.

Opinions differ about the cause of the mud flow, but experts agree it could continue for years.

Some scientists suggest the rupture was triggered by faulty gas exploration techniques by operator PT Lapindo Brantas. Other research suggests it is the result of increased seismic activity, with the mud flow starting two days after a major earthquake.

The mud has inundated several villagers and scores of factories in one of Java's most densely populated areas.

Some of the mud is being channeled to the sea, while the rest is being contained behind dams.

Lapindo is a subsidiary of PT Energy Mega Persada Tbk, controlled by the family of Indonesian Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie. He has said repeatedly the geyser was sparked by the earthquake and that his company bears no financial liability.