Cyclone Fytia Floods Madagascar’s Northwest, Killing at Least Three and Displacing Thousands

MAHAJANGA, Madagascar —

As gray dawn broke over this port city on Madagascar’s northwestern coast, rescuers in orange vests eased wooden boats down flooded streets. Families in the Tsararano neighborhood clutched plastic bags of clothes and schoolbooks as they climbed aboard, wading through waist-deep water driven inland by Cyclone Fytia’s overnight landfall.

By the time the storm’s center had crossed the island and slipped back into the Indian Ocean a day later, at least several people were dead, thousands were displaced and neighborhoods from remote coastal districts to the capital, Antananarivo, were under water.

Fytia came ashore around 4:30 a.m. local time on Jan. 31 near Soalala, in the Boeny region, as a strong tropical cyclone with sustained winds near 150 kph (about 93 mph) and gusts estimated up to 210 kph (130 mph), according to Madagascar’s meteorological service and disaster management agency. Regional meteorological authorities said the storm’s intensity made it the most powerful cyclone to strike Mahajanga Province’s coast in more than four decades.

Madagascar’s National Office for Risk and Disaster Management, known by its French acronym BNGRC, said early tallies showed at least three people killed as Fytia crossed the country, with more than 28,000 residents affected and over 8,000 forced from their homes. Later seasonal summaries by regional meteorological centers, citing national figures, put the death toll at seven with five people injured. Authorities cautioned that numbers could change as access improves in isolated districts.

“The cyclone Fytia has left three people dead and more than 28,000 affected in Madagascar,” BNGRC said in an initial situation report shared with state media, adding that more than 800 houses were completely destroyed and over 6,000 flooded across 19 districts.

Those figures make Fytia less deadly than recent disasters such as Cyclone Batsirai in 2022, which killed at least 123 people, but still significant in a country struggling to recover from a string of intense storms. For coastal communities in Boeny and Melaky, and flood-prone neighborhoods in Antananarivo, it was another blow in an already punishing cyclone cycle.

A fast-forming storm, limited time to prepare

Fytia formed as a disturbed weather zone over the warm waters of the Mozambique Channel on Jan. 28. The system was upgraded to a moderate tropical storm and named on Jan. 30, then rapidly intensified into a tropical cyclone within roughly 12 hours, forecasters said—a pace that left limited time for last-minute preparations along the sparsely defended northwest coast.

Forecasters at Météo Madagascar and the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center on the French island of Réunion tracked the storm’s approach toward Mahajanga Province, warning of very heavy rainfall, destructive winds and a dangerous sea state. In a special bulletin issued at 5 a.m. local time Jan. 31, just after landfall, BNGRC placed Boeny, Melaky and parts of Betsiboka under a red alert for “imminent danger,” warning of generalized flooding, flash floods, landslides and road washouts with expected rainfall of 50 to 150 millimeters in 24 hours.

As the eye came ashore near Soalala, low-lying hamlets and rice plains bore the brunt of wind and storm surge. In Marovoay and around Mahajanga city, residents woke to find roads transformed into brown rivers and fields submerged. Local newspapers described “several neighborhoods under water” in Mahajanga after hours of rain and high tide combined to overwhelm drainage canals.

In Tsararano, a densely populated neighborhood of Mahajanga, authorities carried out preventive evacuations as water rose through the night. BNGRC said families were ferried by boat to temporary shelters coordinated with local officials, firefighters, municipal police, the Malagasy Red Cross and faith-based groups.

“The operation aimed to ensure safety, dignity and access to essential services for the evacuated households,” the agency said in a statement on its website.

By midday Jan. 31, BNGRC reported more than 5,100 people already classified as disaster-affected across nine districts in three regions, even as some of the hardest-hit areas such as Soalala and Mitsinjo remained difficult to assess because of damaged roads and continuing high winds.

Flooding spreads to the capital

From the northwest lowlands, Fytia tracked east-southeast across Madagascar’s central highlands. Its circulation, though weakening over land, dragged bands of intense rain over Antananarivo and surrounding districts that had already endured weeks of saturated ground.

In the capital, overnight downpours flooded multiple neighborhoods and put renewed pressure on an aging drainage network that routinely clogs during the rainy season. Authorities warned of a high risk of flooding along the Sisaony River plains south of the city because of a weakened dyke and recent infrastructure failures. In the week before Fytia’s arrival, a small dam near Antananarivo had partially collapsed after heavy rains, inundating farmland and underscoring what engineers say is a backlog of maintenance on flood defenses.

“Urban flooding has become a recurring problem due to inadequate drainage and uncontrolled urbanization in flood-prone areas,” a senior official in the capital’s urban planning department said in a local radio interview, speaking generally and not only about Fytia.

By early Feb. 1, Météo Madagascar had downgraded Fytia to a tropical depression as it re-emerged over the Indian Ocean near Vatomandry on the east coast and began to move away from the island. Forecasts showed the storm’s remnants passing south-west of Réunion and contributing to heavy rain across parts of the southwest Indian Ocean, including Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi and the Comoros.

Relief challenges and public health risks

Although major ports and airports reopened quickly, inland damage slowed relief efforts. BNGRC reported sections of road and several bridges cut in Boeny and neighboring regions, limiting the movement of heavy equipment and supplies. Local authorities used schools, churches and municipal buildings as emergency shelters, where aid groups said access to clean water, sanitation and basic health care was a concern.

Public health experts warned that stagnant water and damaged sanitation systems could increase the risk of diarrheal disease, while pools of standing water create breeding grounds for mosquitoes that transmit malaria and dengue. International agencies active in Madagascar have previously noted spikes in such illnesses after floods, particularly in informal settlements where drainage is poor.

A season shaped by repeated storms—and a resilience debate

Fytia’s arrival comes after several years of destructive storms that have strained the country’s ability to recover. In 2023, Cyclone Freddy made two landfalls in Madagascar during a record-long path across the Indian Ocean, affecting more than 200,000 people in the country. In the 2024–25 season, cyclones Chido and Dikeledi brought further flooding and damage. Some families hit this year have been forced to rebuild homes or replant fields multiple times in less than five years.

Madagascar, one of the poorest nations in the world, is highly exposed to tropical cyclones because of its location in the southwest Indian Ocean storm belt and the concentration of people and infrastructure along vulnerable coasts and flood plains. Many homes are built from timber, earth or sheet metal that offer little resistance to high winds and floodwaters.

Scientists say the waters of the southwest Indian Ocean have warmed in recent decades, increasing the potential intensity of cyclones and the likelihood of rapid strengthening close to land—a phenomenon seen in storms such as Freddy and now Fytia. While researchers caution that no single storm can be directly attributed to climate change without detailed study, they say a warming climate is making extreme weather events more likely.

Even as emergency teams tally Fytia’s damage, a separate debate is unfolding in Antananarivo over the country’s development path and its ability to fund climate resilience. On Jan. 30, one day before Fytia made landfall, Madagascar’s government formally lifted a 16-year moratorium on new mining permits for most minerals, excluding gold. Officials said the decision was aimed at attracting investment and boosting economic growth.

The move has raised questions among some civil society groups about whether new resource revenues will be directed toward strengthening flood defenses, drainage systems and housing, or whether communities like those in Boeny and Mahajanga will continue to face each cyclone season with limited protection.

‘A familiar disaster and a fresh signal’

In Mahajanga, as the waters began to recede this week, residents swept mud from concrete floors and hung damp mattresses on corrugated roofs to dry in the thin sun. In Antananarivo’s low-lying quarters, families stacked sandbags and cleared trash from gutters as another rain band passed over the city.

The official cyclone season runs until May in the southwest Indian Ocean, and forecasters expect more systems to form before it ends. For now, the boats that carried people from Tsararano’s flooded streets back to dry land sit idle on higher ground, a reminder that the next evacuation could come with little warning.

For families trying to rebuild with salvaged boards and donated tarpaulins, Fytia was both a familiar disaster and a fresh signal of how quickly a storm can form—and how slowly defenses are rising to meet it.