Tropical Cyclone Gezani had already become one of the deadliest weather disasters to hit Madagascar this year. Authorities said at least 31 people were killed, 36 were injured and several more remained missing after the storm swept across the island with destructive force.
The National Office for Risk Management and Civil Protection, known as the BNGRC, said the cyclone moved through Madagascar with winds of up to 270 kilometers an hour. The agency said 29 of the deaths were recorded in Toamasina, the country's second-largest city, which sat at the center of the storm's worst damage.
Officials estimated that 250,406 people were classified as disaster victims and 6,870 were displaced from their homes. In the Atsinanana region, where Toamasina is located, around 75% of infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, underscoring the scale of the impact on roads, housing, utilities and public buildings.
Images and accounts from the aftermath described flooded neighborhoods, collapsed walls, uprooted trees and power poles brought down across affected districts. President Michael Randrianirina visited Toamasina to survey the damage and meet residents as the state response focused on search operations, emergency shelter and restoring basic services.
The storm was not yet finished with the region. Forecasts indicated Gezani would move into the channel between Madagascar and Africa's east coast and could strengthen again before possibly turning back toward Madagascar's southwest coast the following week. Authorities also noted that the cyclone came only days after Tropical Cyclone Fytia, which had already left the island coping with another major disaster.
The casualty figures also signal how widely the storm's impact spread beyond the point of landfall. When a cyclone leaves hundreds of thousands classified as disaster victims, the response has to move from emergency rescue to shelter, transport, food distribution and damage assessment almost at once.
For Madagascar, the most immediate unknown was how many more people could still be located safely in the hardest-hit areas. The evidence packet supports only the confirmed death, injury and displacement numbers, so any deeper estimate of the final toll would be speculative.
The latest figures showed how quickly a tropical system can overwhelm a coastal city and nearby districts when wind, flooding and structural damage arrive together. With people still missing and infrastructure heavily damaged, the immediate priorities were rescue, displacement management and damage assessment rather than recovery.
The number of people classified as disaster victims is especially telling because it captures more than fatalities. It reflects households that lost homes, access to roads, or a normal place to sleep, which is why the response had to be both humanitarian and logistical from the start.
For readers tracking the storm, the key verified point is that Madagascar was still dealing with an unfolding emergency rather than a settled aftermath. The death toll, displacement and damage numbers were all moving in the same direction: worse, not better.
The sequence of figures in Madagascar also matters for planning. Once a storm leaves more than 250,000 people classified as disaster victims, responders have to think about food, shelter, sanitation and transport at the same time. The packet supports only the immediate casualty, displacement and damage numbers, but those numbers alone show why the event remained a major national emergency on the event date.
