Madagascar: start of damage assessment after passage of EMNATI cyclone

No victim is to be deplored, but bad weather prevents help from conducting in-depth research in the affected areas.

Le Monde with AFP

Secours to Madagascar started, Wednesday, February 23, at the end of the afternoon, to evaluate the damage after the passage of the Emnati cyclone on the island already struck for a month by several tropical storms and a first cyclone called Batsirai .

“For now we have no return to potential human reports but you have to stay cautious, we are less than twenty-four hours after the arrival of the Cyclone,” said AFP Faly Aritiana Fabien, the National Risk Management Office (NAMB).

The bad weather has so far prevented the help of conducting in-depth research in the affected areas, mainly in the southeastern and southern of the large Indian Ocean Island. On help videos, the same scenes of desolation as during the disasters that occurred a few weeks earlier: fragile houses embedded in a marrnasse water, debris and trees torn up.

In early February, the Cyclone Batsirai made at least 121 dead, destroyed thousands of homes and devastated harvests. Thousands of people are still without roof. In January, the Tropical Storm Ana had already killed a hundred people in Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Extreme Dryness and Cyclonic Season

According to the latest weather bulletins, the Cyclone who touched land on the eastern coast in the night of Tuesday in Wednesday has fallen slightly in recent hours. “The average wind is reduced to 65 km / h, alternated by gusts of 90 km / h”, according to weather-Madagascar.

Weather-France already alerts a risk of formation of another tropical storm in the next five days.

In the middle of the afternoon, Emnati was inside the land in the Bekily (South) area, and continued its journey to the southwest. The cyclone should leave the island by the Mozambique canal at night. More than 37,300 people were cautious in accommodation centers.

Countries among the poorest on the planet, Madagascar has been struck for months by an extreme drought in a vast area of ​​the south, which generates acute malnutrition and famine pockets.

A dozen storms or cyclones cross each year the southwestern Indian Ocean during the cyclonic season, which runs from November to April.

/Media reports.