From the archives: Castlebar Brother told of Indian Ocean cyclone in 1948
By Tom Gillespie
SEVENTY-six years ago - February 1948 -The Connaught Telegraph published a Castlebar man’s letter from the East.
Brother Basil Kelly, of the De La Salle Order, son of the late Mr. L.J. Kelly, Springfield, Castlebar, who was teaching in St. Joseph’s College, Cureplpe, Mauritius, furnished the newspaper with the following account of a terrible cyclone that ravaged the island of Reunion.
He wrote: Our little island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, due north-east of Madagascar, with a population of 450,000 souls, feels grateful to God it was spared the deaths or damage caused by the worst cyclone in history, which visited its lovely sister isle of Reunion on January 26 and 27, 1948.
On Friday, the 22nd, radio messages warned Mauritius to take all precautions as there was a cyclone 400 miles away, striking west at 25 miles an hour.
All Saturday, Sunday and Monday torrential rains fell incessantly, accompanied by winds blowing at 40 miles an hour.
On Sunday afternoon the cyclone was 100 miles off the coast, having the previous day passed and ravaged the little island of St. Brandon, a dependency of Mauritius, with a population of 3,000.
News received later told of many deaths and extensive damage here. Then the good news came through that for the present there was no danger for Mauritius as the cyclone had seeped south.
On Monday and Tuesday, January 26 and 27, Reunion, with its population of 200,000 and about 100 miles from Mauritius, was hit by the full force of the cyclone.
The velocity of the wind here attained 200 miles per hour. In a few hours all means of communications with the exterior and interior were completely out of gear.
Even now, after a full week, Radio St. Denis is still silent. Whole villages were laid in ruins, scores of houses were carried away by the wind, while hundreds are buried in the ruins.
For three days the island, entirely at the mercy of the cyclone, was isolated in the extreme.
Rivers overflowed and in the floods could be seen the numerous bodies of drowned people as well as uprooted trees and costly pieces of furniture.
Practically all the sugar factories were extensively damaged. Survivors are seriously menaced by famine as at least 60 per cent of the harvest is a total loss.
Almost 80 per cent of the houses were wrecked, many of the roofs being carried miles away.
According to the latest reports there are about 150 deaths and as many missing as a result of the floods.
At the Leper Hospital of St. Barnard three sisters were killed and their chaplain wounded.
Ships at port took to the high seas immediately, and some of them hardly too soon.
Roads, railway lines and bridges were extensively damaged, some of the heavy iron bridges being found in localities very far away.
Both in St. Brandon and in Reunion most of the towns and villages were for many days in floods six-feet high.
Mauricians were very much affected when news from the sister isle came through. According to all accounts, it was more severe than the hurricane which hit Mauritius in 1892. During this hurricane there were 1,200 deaths, 4,000 wounded and 22,000 rendered homeless.
Port Louis, the capital, was one-third destroyed, 15,000 houses were rendered uninhabitable, 170 sugar factories out of a total of 200 knocked down and stocks destroyed, while the wind’s velocity was 170 miles an hour.
In 1945 Mauritius was again heavily hit by a cyclone, which this time also destroyed practically all the sugar crop, the main support of the island, and the velocity of the wind was 124 miles per hour.
So at present, with all haste, help is being organised and rushed to Reunion and the dependent islands. France and Mauritius are generously doing their part.