Day: February 6, 2022

A cyclone killed at least 10 people in southeastern Madagascar, the second to hit the Indian Ocean island in just two weeks, triggering floods, bringing down buildings and cutting power, officials said on Sunday.

One of the worst-hit towns was Nosy Varika on the east coast where almost 95% of buildings were destroyed “as if we had just been bombed” and floods cut access, an official said.

Cyclone Batsirai swept inland late on Saturday, slamming into the eastern coastline with heavy rain and wind speeds of 165 km/h (100 mph). It was projected it could displace as many as 150,000 people.

The damage from the storm compounded the destruction wreaked by Cyclone Ana, which hit the island, with a population of nearly 30,000,000, two weeks ago, killing 55 people and displacing 130,000

Madagascar’s office of disaster and risk management said in a bulletin late on Sunday 10 people had been killed. State radio said some died when their house collapsed in the town of Ambalavao, about 460 kilometers south of the capital Antananarivo.

“We saw only desolation: uprooted trees, fallen electric poles, roofs torn off by the wind, the city completely under water,” Nirina Rahaingosoa, a resident of Fianarantsoa, 420 kilometers south of the capital, told Reuters by phone.

Electricity was knocked out in the town as poles were toppled by gusts of winds that blew all night into Sunday morning, he said.

Willy Raharijaona, technical adviser to the vice president of Madagascar’s Senate, said some parts of the southeast had been cut off from the surrounding areas by flooding.

“It’s as if we had just been bombed. The city of Nosy Varika is almost 95% destroyed,” he said. “The solid houses saw their roofs torn off by the wind. The wooden huts have for the most part been destroyed.”

Another resident who gave only one name, Raharijaona, told Reuters even schools and churches that had been preparing to shelter the displaced around Mananjary in the southeast had their roofs torn off.

In the central region of Haute Matsiatra, villagers shoveled mud from a road to clear damage from a landslide caused by Batsirai.

Cyclone Ana that struck the Indian Ocean Island nation on Jan. 22, leaving at least 55 dead from landslides and collapsed buildings and causing widespread flooding.

After ravaging Madagascar, Ana moved west, making landfall in Mozambique and continuing inland to Malawi. A total of 88 people were killed.

Source: Voice of America

Cyclone Batsirai weakened overnight but floods were still expected due to heavy rain after it hit eastern Madagascar with strong winds, the island’s meteorological office said Sunday.

“Batsirai has weakened,” Meteo Madagascar said, adding that the cyclone’s average wind speed had almost halved to 80 kilometres per hour, while the strongest gusts had scaled back to 110 km/h from the 235 km/h recorded when it made landfall on Saturday evening.

The cyclone, the second storm to hit the large Indian Ocean island nation in just a few weeks, was moving westwards at a rate of 19 km/h, the meteorological services said.

But “localised or generalised floods are still feared following the heavy rains,” it said, adding that Batsirai should emerge at sea in the Mozambique Channel later Sunday.

Batsirai made landfall in Mananjary district, more than 530 kilometres southeast of the capital Antananarivo, around 8 pm local time Saturday.

It reached the island as an “intense tropical cyclone”, packing winds of 165 kilometres per hour, Faly Aritiana Fabien of the country’s disaster management agency said.

The national meteorological office has said it fears “significant and widespread damage”. Just an hour and a half after it first hit land, nearly 27,000 people had been counted as displaced from their homes, Fabien said.

He said his office has accommodation sites, food and medical care ready for victims, as well as search and rescue plans already in place.

The Meteo-France weather service had earlier predicted Batsirai would present “a very serious threat” to Madagascar, after passing Mauritius and drenching the French island of La Reunion with torrential rain for two days.

In the hours before the cyclone hit, residents hunkered down in the impoverished country, still recovering from the deadly Tropical Storm Ana late last month.

In the eastern coastal town of Vatomandry, more than 200 people were crammed in one room in a Chinese-owned concrete building.

Families slept on mats or mattresses.

Community leader Thierry Louison Leaby lamented the lack of clean water after the water utility company turned off supplies ahead of the cyclone.

“People are cooking with dirty water,” he said, amid fears of a diarrhoea outbreak.

Outside plastic dishes and buckets were placed in a line to catch rainwater dripping from the corrugated roofing sheets.

“The government must absolutely help us. We have not been given anything,” he said.

Residents who chose to remain in their homes used sandbags and yellow jerrycans to buttress their roofs.

Other residents of Vatomandry were stockpiling supplies in preparation for the storm.

“We have been stocking up for a week, rice but also grains because with the electricity cuts we cannot keep meat or fish,” said Odette Nirina, a 65-year-old hotelier in Vatomandry.

“I have also stocked up on coal. Here we are used to cyclones,” she said.

Winds of more than 50 kilometres per hour pummelled Vatomandry on Saturday morning, accompanied by intermittent rain.

The disaster agency said the cyclone was expected to remain “dangerous” as it swept across the large island overnight and in the morning.

Flooding is expected due to excessive rainfall in the east, southeast and central regions of the country, it warned.

The United Nations was ramping up its preparedness with aid agencies, placing rescue aircraft on standby and stockpiling humanitarian supplies.

At least 131,000 people were affected by Ana across Madagascar in late January. Close to 60 people were killed, mostly in the capital Antananarivo.

That storm also hit Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, causing dozens of deaths.

The UN’s World Food Programme pointed to estimates from national authorities that some 595,000 people could be directly affected by Batsirai, and 150,000 more might be displaced due to new landslides and flooding.

The storm poses a risk to at least 4.4 million people in one way or another, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

Source: Nam News Network

Cyclone Batsirai made landfall on Madagascar’s eastern coastline late on Saturday, with residents reporting strong winds, a power blackout and houses destroyed as the storm swept inland.

There were fears that Batsirai could compound the devastation wreaked by another cyclone, Ana, which hit the island just two weeks ago, killing 55 people.

The cyclone had average winds of about 165kph, the bulletin said.

“The winds are terrible. I’ve never experienced this. Mananjary has never experienced such a situation. The waves are very high,” Hanitra Raharisoa, a resident of Mananjary, said.

Another resident who gave only one name, Raharijaona, said the storm had knocked out the area’s power grid, felled trees and destroyed some homes.

In a bulletin earlier on Saturday, Madagascar’s weather service had said the cyclone was expected to cross the country from east to west, “remaining generally at a dangerous stage.”

The streets of the capital, Antananarivo, were quiet as many residents opted to stay indoors. Banks and some other businesses were shuttered.

At a shelter in the capital for people left homeless by Cyclone Ana, 20-year-old Faniry said early on Saturday she was too scared to venture outside as Batsirai approached.

“Cyclone Batsirai seems very strong,” she said.

Around her, women and children sat huddled together on the floor alongside their belongings.

“We are stuck here because we can’t bring our children outside because it’s cold and we are afraid of landslides. Better for us to be cautious and stay here,” Faniry said.

Ana battered the country last month, leaving at least 55 dead from landslides and collapsed buildings. The storm also left widespread flooding and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

After ravaging Madagascar, Ana moved west, making landfall in Mozambique and continuing inland to Malawi. A total of 88 people died, including those in Madagascar.

Lalaina Randrianjatovo, a retired colonel who works as director of a rapid response unit in the ministry of population, said Batsirai’s path was likely to spare the capital but heavy rains were still expected.

“Strong rains will probably cause flooding,” he said, adding more people were expected to arrive at the Antananarivo shelter, which already houses about 1,500 people.

Source: Nam News Network