As Madagascar commences the recovery process from the devastation of Cyclone Ivan, the local population is still struggling with flooding issues in many parts of the country.
The provisional official report as of February 23th on damages and casualties accounted for 42 human losses and 82, 228 people relocated or without homes and 18.000 hectares of rice fields underwater.
The violence of the tropical storm was comparable to Hurricane Katrina yet as Chris Mooney wrote in “the intersection”, the reports from mainstream media was rather minimal:
“When Britney shaves her head, everybody hears about it.When Ana Nicole Smith dies, everybody hears about it.But when Madagascar gets struck by a record six tropical cyclones in one season, killing hundreds and displacing perhaps as many as a hundred thousand, not to mention jeopardizing food supplies for many more, does it garner major and sustained U.S. press coverage?”
Marie-Sophie of planete vivante also noticed that the coverage in the french press was reduced to a bare minimum. “Hardly some paragraphs in the newspaper “Le Monde” and on the national television. Many Malagasy complain here and rightly!!!”
Mainstream media may have dropped the ball on covering the cyclonic season in the Indian Ocean but alternative citizen media filled the void and try their best to keep the lines of communication open within the country and with the rest of the world.
The combined efforts of bloggers covering the aftermath of the storm resulted in an interactive map of the current status of many regions in Madagascar after Ivan:
as well as a comprehensive slideshow illustrating the extend of flooding in Antanarivo and its surrounding
( credit for slideshow to avylavitra and mariesophie )
The Malagasy government has asked for international aid and the rescue effort have already paid dividend. The issue of management and relocation of people who lost their homes is still far from being resolved as accounts of dreadful living conditions start to come out from the refugees’ camps:
“En moyenne, près de 40 personnes dont 80 % des enfants, s’entassent dans une tente de près de 25m². L’air est ainsi irrespirable surtout qu’il n’y a que deux fenêtres au maximum sur les tentes. Les 4 000 sinistrés accueillis dans la cour de la Cisco d’Atsimondrano à Tanjombato, entre autres, ne disposent que de 4 toilettes”. “(English translation): about 40 people on average are gathered ina a tent of about 25m2. The air inside is suffocating as there are only 2 windows per tent. There are 4,000 people in Tanjombato for only 4 bathrooms.”
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Droughts here, floods there, lower crop yields everywhere!