Madagascar: Cyclone Gezani hits the country's second largest city hard, causing "monstrous" damage

Cyclone Gezani, with gusts of 250 km/h, made landfall in Madagascar on Tuesday, according to the specialized meteorological center in Réunion, hitting the country's second largest city, Toamasina, hard, where a witness described "monstrous" damage to AFP.

"The city of Toamasina (Tamatave) was hit directly by the most intense part of the cyclone," namely the "eye wall," indicated the Regional Meteorological Center specializing in cyclones (CMRS) of the French island of Reunion in its latest bulletin.

"It's monstrous. Everything is devastated, roofs blown off, floors flooded, the walls surrounding solid houses have collapsed. And I'm talking about the nice neighborhoods, with well-built houses," a resident told AFP during a brief return of the telephone network.

For the CMRS, this "could be one of the most intense direct impacts of the satellite era on the Tamatave sector, probably rivaling Geralda".

In February 1994, the cyclone caused at least 200 deaths and left 500,000 people homeless.

Having lost intensity upon contact with Madagascar, Gezani has been downgraded to a tropical storm but is expected to cross the "Big Island" from one end to the other, passing north of Antananarivo.

"I saw materials flying horizontally," says the same resident who has lived in Taomasina for thirty years, without electricity from the early afternoon, five hours before the impact.

School is suspended on Wednesday in several regions of the country where the day will also be a holiday, the government announced.

The president of the Refoundation, Colonel Michaël Randrianirina, who has been at the head of the country since October and a military takeover, announced that he would go to Taomasina to be as close as possible to the population at the time of the cyclone's passage.

The system is expected to regain intensity upon reaching the Mozambique Channel and hit the southern African country as a cyclone, according to forecasts from the CMRS.