MOTHER Nature has unleashed her full fury on Madagascar as Tropical Cyclone Gezani carved a devastating path of destruction across the island nation, claiming at least 20 lives and leaving 15 people missing in her wake.
The monster storm transformed into a 270-kilometre-per-hour harbinger of death as it slammed into the coast with apocalyptic force, ripping metal roofing from buildings like paper, uprooting ancient trees as if they were toothpicks, and reducing homes to rubble in the impoverished port city of Toamasina.
“I have never experienced winds this violent,” said resident Harimanga Ranaivo, his voice trembling with terror. “The doors and windows are made of metal, but they are being violently shaken.”
The catastrophe marks Madagascar’s second brutal encounter with nature’s wrath in just 10 days. Cyclone Fytia had already killed 14 and forced more than 31,000 from their homes before Gezani arrived to compound the misery.
Eighteen bodies were recovered in Toamasina, the nation’s second-largest city, with two more deaths reported in neighbouring districts. At least 33 people suffered injuries as the cyclone’s 185-kilometre-per-hour sustained winds transformed the coastal landscape into a war zone of twisted metal, shattered walls, and darkness.
More than 2,740 terrified residents fled to emergency shelters as officials scrambled to evacuate communities before the storm’s landfall. Schools stood empty, shuttered in anticipation of the tempest.
The rising Indian Ocean had already begun swallowing Toamasina’s streets when Gezani made her violent entrance, flooding neighbourhoods before the cyclone even arrived. Then came the winds, roaring demons that collapsed homes, peeled roofs like sardine cans, crumbled walls, and severed power lines, plunging entire communities into pitch blackness.
By Wednesday morning, the weakened storm — now downgraded to a moderate tropical cyclone — had pivoted westward, churning 100 kilometres north of the capital. Meteorologists tracked Gezani’s path across the central highlands, expecting her to exit into the Mozambique Channel by nightfall.
But the damage was done. Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest nations, now faces the grim task of counting its dead, searching for the missing, and rebuilding shattered lives in the wake of nature’s merciless assault.
