Cyclone Batsirai weakens after hitting Madagascar, floods feared

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Cyclone Batsirai weakens after hitting Madagascar, floods feared

1:22 CAT | 06 Feb 2022

Residents of Mahanoro, Madagascar, are seen clearing the damages caused by the passage of Cyclon Batsirai on Feb. 6, 2022. 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. [Photo: AFP]

The country’s disaster agency says the cyclone is expected to remain “dangerous” as it sweeps across the large island overnight and in the morning.

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 on Sunday (Feb 6).

“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 Indian Ocean island nation in just a few weeks, was moving westwards at a rate of 19kmh, 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 on Sunday.

#Batsirai is now an overland depression over S #Madagascar after making landfall near Mananjary. Heavy rain will continue in S Madagascar into Monday. The center will push off the SW coast of Madagascar late Sunday then track S then SE. pic.twitter.com/T2AKj483ai

— Jason Nicholls (@jnmet) February 6, 2022

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, Mr Faly Aritiana Fabien from the country’s disaster management agency told AFP.

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, Mr Fabien said.

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

‘Very serious threat’

The Meteo-France weather service had earlier predicted that 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,” Mr Leaby said.

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

Cyclone still ‘dangerous’

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,” Ms Odette Nirina, a 65-year-old hotelier in Vatomandry, told AFP. “I have also stocked up on coal. Here, we are used to cyclones.”

Winds of more than 50kmh 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, south-east and central regions of the country, it warned.

The United Nations (UN) 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.

Source: AFP / France24