At least three people have died in the northern Madagascar for the impact this Saturday of cyclone tropical ‘Dikeledi’, The National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC, in its French acronym) reported this Sunday. The deaths were registered in the communes of Rantabe, Ambodimanga and Anivorano Norte, indicated the BNGRC in a statement.
In Rantabe, a 54-year-old man died after being swept away by a watercourse; in Ambodimanga, another 33-year-old man died for the same reason; and in Anivorano Norte, a third man lost his life when fall a tree about his house.
A total of 999 personas The equivalent of 217 households were affected by the cyclone, especially in the northern region of Sava, where 308 displaced people (76 households) were counted. Likewise, 179 houses were flooded and 38 were destroyed by Dikeledi.
“We still need to be alert to rising water levels in the rivers and regions, even after Cyclone ‘Dikeledi’ has left the Mozambique channel,” the state agency warned.
Although the cyclone made landfall this Saturday in Madagascar, at 09:00 local time (06:00 GMT) this Sunday it was 213 kilometers north of the coastal city of Mahajanga (north) with winds of 100 kilometers per hour at sea, according to the Institute of Meteorology of the island country (Meteo Madagascar).
“Rain and storm activities directly associated with Dikeledi are limited to the sea,” Meteo Madagascar noted, adding that “weather conditions along the northern and central-western coasts will remain poor.”
The projections indicated that at least 45,000 people could be directly affected by the cyclone in Madagascar, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
According to OCHA, Dikeledi could reach the Mozambique Channel this Sunday and heavy rain is expected to cause flooding, strong winds and rough sea conditions in the Comoros Islands and Mozambique.
Last month, the cyclone Chido It caused at least 120 deaths and almost 690,000 affected as it passed through northern Mozambique.
Chido also caused at least 13 deaths in neighboring Malawi, after devastating the French archipelago of Mayotte, claiming the lives of at least 39 people and injuring around 2,500.
Southeast Africa usually endures an annual tropical storm season that lasts from October to April and sometimes causes numerous deaths and extensive material damage.
Between February and March 2023, Freddy, the longest cyclone on record, killed more than 1,200 people in Malawi and almost 200 in Mozambique.
It also affected more than 1.7 million people in those and other areas of the region such as Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Madagascar or French Réunion.
Mud torrents in Mayotte
Meanwhile, more than 14,500 people are taking refuge in the 79 emergency centers set up in the French overseas territory of Mayotte, the archipelago located between Madagascar and the southeast coast of continental Africa, after the arrival this past morning of the tropical storm ‘Dikeledi’.
The torrential rains accompanying the storm system have caused torrents of mud that are crossing at full speed the main roads of the towns in the south of the archipelago, although at the moment without victims to regret, according to local sources of the France Info chain, but towns like Mbouini “are again completely devastated” having been left very weakened by the passage, at the end of last year, of the catastrophic cyclone ‘Chido’.
In fact, the aftermath of the cyclone have represented an obstacle in the evacuation and protection tasks of the population because many of the shelters ended up seriously damaged by ‘Chido’, which has forced the municipalities to overload the reception centers due to the lack of space.
The ‘Chido’ left almost 40 dead and more than 5,500 injured in its wake for a territory that has been completely devastated by winds that reached 230 kilometers per hour.
