Houses with torn roofs, uprooted trees, cut roads, flooded land: the first images from Madagascar after the passage of tropical cyclone Batsirai, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, are dramatic. At least six people died and nearly 48,000 were displaced, according to an initial report communicated by SMS to Agence France Presse by a disaster management official, Paolo Emilio Raholinarivo. Disruptions in communication systems prevented, Sunday afternoon, to get a clear idea of the damage on the large island in the Indian Ocean, one of the poorest countries in the world.
The cyclone hit Madagascar on Saturday evening with “a wind of 165 km / h and gusts at 235 km / h”, and lost power overnight. Weather-Madagascar dreaded Saturday “floods or floods, localized or generalized, following heavy rains”. Previously, Batsirai had caused torrential rains for two days on the island of Reunion, where 37,000 inhabitants were still deprived of drinking water on Sunday. The storm then headed south.
On the east coast, in Mahanoro, the waves swept away part of the cemetery, digging up several bodies as they passed. A little further south, in Mananjary, another landslide was reported, and part of this town of 30,000 inhabitants seems to have been destroyed. A user showed on Facebook the refugee population at the mosque.
For several days, the Malagasy had been preparing with the limited means at their disposal. In January, tropical storm Ana had already left behind around 60 dead and tens of thousands of victims. All schools had been closed since Friday.
Shortage of drinking water
In the coastal town of Vatomandry, hours before Batsirai’s arrival, more than 200 people crowded into a room in a Chinese-owned concrete building for protection, families sleeping on mats or mattresses, found AFP. A local official, Thierry Louison Leaby, complained about the lack of drinking water, the supply having been cut before the storm. “People cook with dirty water”, he worried, fearing an epidemic of diarrhea. Outside, dishes and plastic cups collected rainwater pouring from corrugated iron roofs.
Friday, before its arrival, the impact of the cyclone in Madagascar was announced as “considerable”, according to a spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) on the island. The director of the World Food Program (WFP) for Madagascar, Pasqualina Di Sirio, anticipated “a major crisis” affecting more than 600,000 people. About 4.4 million people, out of 28 million inhabitants, are threatened in one way or another, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
A “climatic” famine?
The south of Madagascar has suffered for three years from a drought which has caused a situation of food disaster, described by a United Nations report in November as “world’s first climate famine”. This definition is contested by some of the experts.
During the hurricane season, from November to April, about ten storms or cyclones are expected to cross the southwest Indian Ocean. The phenomena being named each year following the alphabetical order, after Ana and Batsirai will come Cliff, Dumako, Emnati, Fezile, etc. It is impossible to predict their strength, their trajectory, and whether they will be as virulent as the first two of 2022.