At least 31 people died from the passage of Cyclone Gezani in Madagascar, which hit the country’s second largest city, Toamasina, on Tuesday night, local authorities announced this Wednesday.
“What happened is a catastrophe: almost 75% of the city of Toamasina was destroyed,” Colonel Michaël Randrianirina, who took power in October, said before the cameras.
Gusts of up to 250 km/h swept through this port city of nearly 400,000 inhabitants, where another four people remain missing and 36 were injured, according to the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC).
In an aerial video shared by the office you can see how the city’s tin roofs were lifted. The palm trees on the central Independence Avenue were completely bent.
“It is total chaos, 90% of the roofs of the houses were blown off, totally or partially,” Rija Randrianarisoa, a regional official for the NGO Action Against Hunger, told AFP.
“The roads are impassable, due to fallen trees and tin roofs. Cars cannot circulate,” he added.
According to the Malagasy authorities, the streets are covered with hundreds of trees uprooted by the cyclone, which has left more than 250,000 victims.
The city was hit by the eye of the cyclone. The cyclone center of the French island of La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, spoke in its bulletin of “one of the most intense direct impacts of the satellite era.”
Gezani will cross the Mozambique channel and could hit the south of this southern African country starting Friday night, already affected by floods at the beginning of the year.
You may be interested: Shooting at a school in Krasnodar, Russia, leaves one dead
Leave a Reply