Malagasy seasonal workers who had just finished harvesting the cloves and were returning to join their families for Christmas: 85 of them were killed in a shipwreck in northeastern Madagascar, according to an updated report Thursday. The cargo ship that sank on Monday, a 12-meter-long wooden boat, was not authorized to carry passengers but still had 138 people on board, maritime authorities said Thursday.
Fifty people saved
The boat had left the small town of Antseraka towards Soanierana-Ivongo, less than a hundred km further south, and ran aground very close to its destination. “The death toll rises to 85, including 21 bodies that were recovered” Wednesday, Gendarmerie General Zafisambatra Ravoavy told AFP. Fifty people were saved, mainly people who were on the deck of the boat according to a maritime official, and three passengers remain missing.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the engine would have had a technical problem. “The boat found itself at the mercy of the waves and ran aground on a reef,” before taking on the water, said Adrien Ratsimbazafy, of the Maritime and River Port Agency (APMF).
Most of the passengers were seasonal
“Personal effects, identity cards and money were found by the emergency services,” Alban Menavolo, the young mayor of Soanierana-Ivongo, told AFP on Thursday. “Most of the passengers were seasonal, from the countryside,” he said. “These Malagasy had gone to harvest the cloves, a little further north of the port of departure, and by taking the boat, they intended to join their families with the money they won, for the end of the year celebrations”.
The distance between the two localities is covered in just over two hours by boat, against at least eight by bush taxi, according to several residents. “Many victims are from here, I knew some of them. People are in mourning”, the mayor had confided the day before, saying himself overwhelmed with fatigue and fear, between the multiple burials and the transport body between his village and neighboring localities.
At the end of the clove season
The clove season, one of Madagascar’s main export products along with vanilla, lasts from October to the end of December. These dried flower buds, called cloves, are used in cooking but also for their therapeutic properties. A mass is scheduled for Thursday for the deceased and the flags are at half mast across the country. President Andy Rajoelina announced Tuesday this national day of mourning, to mark the tragedy of this shipwreck and a helicopter crash that left two people missing on the same day.
Monday evening, a helicopter, which left the capital Antananarivo to go to the shipwreck area, crashed at sea, with the Secretary of State for the Gendarmerie, Serge Gellé, on board. Ejected from the aircraft, Mr. Gellé and a gendarme survived, swimming nearly twelve hours to reach shore. Two other gendarmes, including the pilot, are missing.
The helicopter did not “fall from a great height”
“My turn to die has not yet come, thank God,” General Gellé, 57, said shortly after being rescued by fishermen near Mahambo beach, about 75 km north of Toamasina, the large port city of eastern Madagascar. “We did not expect it at all. The helicopter received gusts of wind. And we fell,” he told AFP later. It was neither “the driver’s fault” nor a mechanical problem, he said.
“If I am still alive (…) it is because we were flying at low altitude, we did not fall from very high because we were flying low following the sea”, he added, specifying that he took a chair from the device to use it as a lifebuoy.