Winds of more than 200km per hour (124 kilometers per hour) were predicted when Batsirai’s hurricane hit Madagascar.
Hurricane Cyclone Batsirai is expected to reach the east of Madagascar on Saturday, placing a “great threat” to millions with strong winds and torrential downpours that will ravage the Indian Ocean island.
Coastal residents were devastated before the storm hit and winds of more than 200km per hour (124 kilometers per hour) were predicted as the country continued to recover. Tropical Storm Ana at the end of January.
After crossing Mauritius and soaking the island of La Reunion in France for two days by storm, Batsirai was about 250km (155 miles) east of Madagascar early Saturday, the Meteorological Agency of France said.
Batsirai is expected to fall in the middle of the day until Saturday as a typhoon, “which poses a serious threat to the region,” the fortune-teller said in a statement on Monday.
The storm’s eye was predicted to pass through the center of the island overnight until Sunday, before leaving its western shores by Monday.
Winds can reach “more than 200 or 250 km / h … in the affected area” and the waves can reach 15 meters (50 meters), said Meteo-France.
The United Nations has said it is stepping up its efforts with aid agencies, placing rescue planes in the stands and storing humanitarian supplies.
Batsirai’s results in Madagascar are expected to be “huge”, Jens Laerke, a spokesman for UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
An estimated 131,000 people were affected by Ana across Madagascar at the end of January. At least 58 people have been killed, mostly in the capital Antananarivo. The storm also affected Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, killing several people.
The UN World Food Program (WFP) has also estimated that 595,000 people could be directly affected by Batsirai, and another 150,000 may have been displaced by floods and floods.
“We are scared,” Pasqualina Di Sirio, who heads WFP in Madagascar, told reporters via video from the Indian Ocean island.
Search and rescue teams on the island are alert and people are strengthening their homes.
Tsarafidy Ben Ali, a 23-year-old girl, was sitting on the roof of her house with a tin roof over her head and a large plastic bag.
“The storm is going to be very strong. This is why we are strengthening the roof,” he told AFP.
The storm poses a threat to at least 4.4 million people in some way, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
