Death toll from Cyclone Batsirai in Madagascar jumps to 111

The death toll from Cyclone Batsirai in Madagascar jumped to 111 on Friday, February 11, from 92 reported earlier this week, the state disaster relief agency said.

The cyclone hit the Indian Ocean island late on Saturday, February 5, slamming the southeastern coastline before receding late on Sunday, February 6.

The disaster relief agency said that of the deaths, 87 had occurred in one area, the Ikongo district in southeast Madagascar. It said earlier this week it was still collecting details about what had happened in Ikongo.

Batsirai was Madagascar’s second destructive storm in two weeks, after Cyclone Ana killed 55 people and displaced 130,000 in a different area of the country, further north…READ ON

Cause Of 2021’s Mysterious Global Tsunami Finally Identified

In August 2021, a mysterious tsunami rippled throughout the world, traveling an astonishing 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) across three different oceans. Seismologists were instantly puzzled – there was a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in the south Atlantic directly prior to the tsunami, but at 47 kilometers (29 miles) below the surface, it was far too deep in the ocean to generate such a wave. The scientists discovered that the huge rupture, spanning 400 kilometers (250 miles), should have resulted in a more significant earthquake, and the mystery has remained ever since.

In this brief 200-second period, 70 percent of the total energy from all the quakes combined was released, sending a tsunami that traveled across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

Now, new research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests the causative earthquake that occurred near the South Sandwich Islands was not just one event, but actually five individual sub-quakes in a row, hiding a shallower magnitude 8.2 earthquake that resulted in the far-reaching tsunami. Such a result suggests global earthquake monitoring may require improvements to be able to identify more complex quake interactions…READ ON