The UN warned Tuesday that authorities and aid workers were racing against the clock to protect people as Madagascar braces for its fourth tropical storm in as many weeks.
Cyclone Emnati is expected to make landfall on southern Madagascar Tuesday evening — just weeks after the island was lashed by Cyclone Batsirai on February 5, affecting some 270,000 people and claiming 120 lives.
At the same time, some 21,000 people still remain displaced from when tropical storm Ana struck in late January.
Another 5,000 were affected last week by tropical storm Dumako.
“We are in a race against time to protect those who dealt with the fury of the first three extreme events from the impact of Emnati,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) also said it was on an emergency footing.
“We are obviously praying for the best, but preparing for the worst,” WFP spokesman Tomson Phiri told reporters.
The agency has been pre-positioning food and non-food aid to roll out rapidly in the aftermath of the storm, Phiri said.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) describes Emnati as “a large and dangerous cyclone likely to cause considerable damage”.
Emnati had earlier been feared to strike with the strength of a category 3 or 4 cyclone.
But a WMO spokeswoman said it had been downgraded and was now expected to make landfall as a category 2 event.
Nonetheless, winds of up to 200 kilometres (120 miles) per hour were expected, she said.
Flooding and landslides from pounding rain are the biggest threats.
“The weather is getting worse on the east coast of Madagascar,” as the cyclone was more than 100 kilometres away, said Meteo-France, which forecasts wind gusts of between of 150 to 200 kmh, and heavy downpours.
Laerke warned that the central and eastern regions that were badly hit by Batsirai would also likely be affected.
Madagascar’s risk and disaster management agency (BNGRC) expected the cyclone to impact more the coastal town of Mananjary, where Batsirai first hit and severely destroyed the town earlier this month.
One of the poorest countries in the world, the southern region of the large Indian Ocean island country has been ravaged by drought, the worst in 40 years, according to the UN, which blames climate change for the crisis.
The island is prone to several storms and cyclones between November and April every year.
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© Agence France-Presse