VATOMANDRY, Madagascar — Powerful
Cyclone Batsirai was
closing in on eastern
Madagascar Saturday as residents sought secure shelter or
reinforced their roofs with sandbags after warnings that "widespread
damage" was feared.
اضافة اعلان
Batsirai is expected to lash the eastern
parts of the cyclone-prone Indian ocean island with powerful winds and
torrential rains at around 8pm (1700 GMT) on Saturday, according to the
country's national weather forecasters.
It will make landfall in Mananjary district,
more than 530KM southeast of the capital Antananarivo, as a "tropical
cyclone or intense cyclone at around 8pm local time," said Meteo
Madagascar.
By that time, the wind speed is forecast to
be 165km per hour.
"Significant and widespread damage is
therefore feared," warned the meteorological services.
The Meteo-France weather service had earlier
warned of winds of up to 260km per hour and waves as high as 15m.
It said Batsirai would likely make landfall
as an intense tropical cyclone, "presenting a very serious threat to the
area" after passing Mauritius and drenching the French island of La
Reunion with torrential rain for two days.
Residents hunkered down before the storm
made landfall in the impoverished country still recovering from the deadly
Tropical Storm Ana late last month.
'Help us'
In the eastern coastal town of
Vatomandry more than 200 people were crammed in one room in a Chinese-owned
concrete building while waiting for Batsirai to hit.
Families slept on mats or mattresses.
Community leader Thierry Louison Leaby
lamented the lack of clean water after the water utility company turned off
supplies ahead of the cyclone.
"People are cooking with dirty
water," he said, amid fears of a diarrhea outbreak.
Outside plastic dishes and buckets were
placed in a line to catch rainwater dripping from the corrugated roofing sheets.
"The government must absolutely help
us. We have not been given anything," he said.
Residents who chose to remain in their homes
used sandbags and yellow jerry cans to buttress their roofs.
Other residents of Vatomandry were
stockpiling supplies in preparation for the storm.
"We have been stocking up for a week,
rice but also grains because with the electricity cuts we can not keep meat or
fish," said Odette Nirina, 65, a hotelier in Vatomandry.
"I have also stocked up on coal. Here
we are used to cyclones," she told AFP.
Gusts of winds of more than 50km/h pummeled
Vatomandry Saturday morning, accompanied by intermittent rain.
'We are very nervous'
The
UN said it was ramping up its
preparedness with aid agencies, placing rescue aircraft on standby and
stockpiling humanitarian supplies.
The impact of Batsirai on Madagascar is
expected to be "considerable", Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN's
humanitarian organization OCHA, told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
At least 131,000 people were affected by Ana
across Madagascar in late January. At least 58 people were killed, mostly in
the capital Antananarivo. The storm also hit Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe,
causing dozens of deaths.
The UN's
World Food Program (WFP) pointed to
estimates from national authorities that some 595,000 people could risk being
directly affected by Batsirai, and 150,000 more might be displaced due to new
landslides and flooding.
"We are very nervous," Pasqualina
Di Sirio, who heads the WFP's program in Madagascar, told reporters by
video-link from the island.
Search and rescue teams have been placed on
alert.
Inland in Ampasipotsy Gare, sitting on top
of his house, Tsarafidy Ben Ali, a 23-year-old coal seller, held down
corrugated iron sheets on the roof with large bags filled with soil.
"The gusts of wind are going to be very
strong. That's why we're reinforcing the roofs," he told AFP.
The storm poses a risk to at least 4.4
million people in one way or another, the
International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies said.
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