Madagascar Cyclone Leaves 20 Dead

Cyclone Gezani made landfall in the city of Toamasina with winds reaching 250 kilometres (155 miles) per hour, according to the country’s disaster management agency.

The National Office for Risk and Disaster Management said Wednesday that 20 people had died, many after houses collapsed.

Fifteen people were reported missing, and at least 33 were injured, according to updated figures.

Drone footage released by the agency showed severe flooding in Toamasina, a city of about 400,000 people located roughly 220 kilometres northeast of the capital, Antananarivo. Roofs were torn from buildings, and trees were uprooted.

Authorities said there was extensive damage in the surrounding Atsinanana region and that assessments were still underway.

“It’s total chaos: 90 percent of house roofs have been blown off, entirely or in part,” said the head of disaster management at the Action Against Hunger humanitarian group, Rija Randrianarisoa.

“The roads are completely inaccessible because of trees on the ground, sheet metal,” Randrianarisoa told AFP.

A resident of Toamasina described the storm as “monstrous”, saying by phone late Tuesday that the winds had brought down solid walls.

The cyclone weakened after landfall but continued moving inland, raising concerns about further flooding.

Madagascar’s leader, Michael Randrianirina, who took power in October, travelled to Toamasina on Wednesday to assess the damage.

The regional cyclone monitoring service CMRS, based on France’s Reunion Island, said Toamasina had been “directly hit by the most intense part” of the storm.

It added that the landfall could be among the strongest recorded in the area in the satellite era, comparable to Cyclone Geralda in February 1994, which killed at least 200 people and affected around half a million.

Cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean typically runs from November to April and produces about a dozen storms each year.