Cyclone Freddy’s battering winds make landfall in Madagascar

By LAETITIA BEZAIN
Associated Press

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — A slightly weakened Cyclone Freddy has made landfall in Madagascar, where schools, businesses and public transportation were shut down ahead of its arrival. Freddy was packing winds gusting to 180 kilometers per hour, or about 111 miles per hour, as it came ashore in a nation already hit in January by a tropical storm that killed at least 30 people. Freddy was already blamed for at least one death, of a 27-year-old man who drowned near the port of Mahanoro. A restaurant owner in the port city of Mananjary said residents stocked up on vegetables and rice and hunkered down to wait out the storm. Madagascar’s emergency management service organized food rations and distribution for areas in the cyclone’s path before Freddy is expected to blow itself out over mainland Africa.