At least four people were killed and hundreds of thousands were left without water or electricity as Cyclone Garance flooded parts of the island of Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, late last week, reports say.
The cyclone made landfall on Feb. 28 on the northern side of the island, which lies east of Madagascar.
Amid widespread flooding, authorities reported at least four people died after being caught in flash floods, mudslides and wind-related accidents. Wind speeds exceeded 200 kilometers per hour (124 miles per hour), with gusts of 214 km/h (133 mph) at the island’s main airport.
Garance is reportedly the strongest storm to hit Réunion since Tropical Cyclone Firinga in January 1989.
More than 180,000 residents lost electricity and 310,000 were without water as a result of the storm. Nearly 1,000 people had to stay in temporary shelters.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a cyclone this powerful, and also the first time I’ve been afraid,” Vincent Clain, a resident from the northern coast, told Agence France-Presse. He added he feared that uprooted trees in his garden would crash into his house.
The French government reportedly sent 200 firefighters and aid workers from mainland France and Mayotte, another of its other territories in the Indian Ocean. Tarpaulins were also sent to the eastern part of the island to serve as makeshift shelter for the hardest hit.
Last December, Mayotte was struck by Cyclone Chido, which left at least 40 people dead in what has been described as the worst cyclone to hit the archipelago in almost a century. At least 41 people remain missing after Chido, and many more are feared dead.
Réunion’s central government representative, Patrice Latron, told local media that a lot of work is needed to clear roads blocked by fallen trees.
Both Réunion and Mauritius were forced to shut down their airports last week because of the cyclone.
Garance was one of six tropical cyclones simultaneously active in the Southern Hemisphere last week. Severe Tropical Storm Honde formed in the Mozambique Channel, skirting the southern tip of Madagascar. Severe Tropical Cyclone Alfred developed northeast of Australia, while two shorter-lived storms, Rae and Seru, emerged in the southwest Pacific. Rae caused heavy rains and flooding in some parts of Fiji. Severe Tropical Cyclone Bianca formed northwest of Australia but didn’t make landfall.
“Though infrequent, it is far from unusual for this many named storms to exist concurrently. A far rarer occurrence is for this many to occur within a single ocean basin,” Lauren Herdman of MetDesk wrote in an analysis.
Banner image of Cyclone Garance by MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
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