MADAGASCAR – The torrential rains that accompanied last week’s passage of Cyclone Ava on the eastern part of the island of Madagascar left 29 people as well as more than 80 000 victims. This is according to a report released on Monday evening by the Malagasy authorities.
“At the national level, the provisional assessment reports 29 deaths, 22 missing persons, 17 170 internally displaced persons and 83 023 disaster victims,” said the National Bureau of Disaster Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) in a statement.
On Monday, seventeen of the victims died as a result of a landslide that caused a house to collapse in the town of Ivory, south east of the capital of Antananarivo.
Madagascar was hit by the cyclone on Friday morning, before sweeping the eastern part of the Big Island and leaving the territory on Saturday evening.
Torrential rains and severe winds caused many rivers to overflow in the east of the island and caused a lot of flooding. A number of communities were left without electricity and roads were cut off.
Being one of the poorest countries in the world, Madagascar is regularly affected by cyclones. By March 2017, Enawo had killed at least 78 people. over the past ten years, the country has been hit by forty-five cyclones and tropical storms.
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