Six dead after cyclone hits Madagascar; nearly 48,000 displaced

VATOMANDRY • At least six people have died and nearly 48,000 displaced in Madagascar after Cyclone Batsirai struck the Indian Ocean island nation overnight, the disaster management agency said yesterday.

Mr Paolo Emilio Raholinarivo, director of risk management in the national disaster agency, listed the number of dead and their location in a text message to Agence France-Presse, but gave no further details.

An official updated list of the number of people impacted by the storm, which brought heavy rain and winds, showed a total of 47,888 people had been displaced.

The cyclone hit eastern Madagascar with strong winds, said the African country's meteorological office yesterday.

"Batsirai has weakened," Meteo Madagascar said, adding that the cyclone's average wind speed had almost halved to 80kmh, while the strongest gusts had scaled back to 110kmh from the 235kmh recorded when it made landfall on Saturday evening.

The cyclone, the second storm to hit the large island nation in just a few weeks, was moving westwards at a rate of 19kmh, the meteorological service said.

It said "localised or generalised floods are still feared following the heavy rain".

Batsirai made landfall in Mananjary district, more than 530km south-east of the capital Antananarivo, around 8pm local time on Saturday. It reached the island as an "intense tropical cyclone", packing winds of 165kmh, said Mr Faly Aritiana Fabien of the country's disaster management agency.

The national meteorological office has said it fears "significant and widespread damage".

Just 11/2 hours after it first hit land, nearly 27,000 people had been counted as displaced from their homes, Mr 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, over 200 people were crammed in a 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," Mr Leaby said.

At least 131,000 people were affected by Tropical Storm Ana across Madagascar late last month. About 60 people were killed, mostly in the capital Antananarivo.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE