The second-largest city in Madagascar, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, was battered by Cyclone Gezani on Tuesday, with wind gusts of up to 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour.
“It’s monstrous. Everything is devastated, roofs have been blown off, floors are flooded, the walls of solid houses have collapsed,” a resident of Toamasina, on Madagascar’s east coast, told AFP by telephone during a brief return of connection.
“And I’m talking about the nice neighbourhoods, with well-built houses,” said the source, who had been left without electricity since the afternoon, five hours before the cyclone hit.
Toamasina was “directly hit by the most intense part” of the storm, according to the most recent update from the CMRS cyclone forecaster on the island of Reunion in France.
As a precaution, the government has declared Wednesday a non-working day, and schools will be closed in a number of the island’s areas.
once it moved into inland Madagascar, Gezani lost strength and was downgraded to a tropical storm, although it is predicted to regain cyclone-level strength once it crosses the channel to Mozambique.
Colonel Michael Randrianirina, in power in Madagascar since an October military coup, said he would make his way to Toamasina to be closer to the people at the time of Gezani’s passing.
According to the CMRS, the cyclone’s landfall was likely one of the most intense recorded in the region during the satellite era, rivalling Geralda in February 1994.
That storm left at least 200 dead and affected half a million more.
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