Emergency teams searched for survivors on Monday and sought to restore services in Mayotte, France’s poorest overseas territory, where hundreds or even thousands of people may have died in the worst cyclone to hit the Indian Ocean islands in almost a century. .
Cyclone Chido devastated much of the archipelago off east Africa over the weekend with winds of more than 200 km/h, battering hillside homes and cutting off telephones, power and drinking water.
With areas still inaccessible, France’s acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said upon arriving at the disaster area that it would take days to discover the full extent of the damage and deaths.
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“The images are apocalyptic. It’s a disaster, there’s nothing left,” an intensive care nurse named Oceane at the capital’s main hospital Mamoudzou told BFM TV.
Professor Hamada Ali told Reuters that the streets were covered in mud and trees, people were sheltering in schools and bottled water was being used for cooking.
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“I saw a person injured by metal… Houses with metal sheet roofs were swept away by the cyclone. There are precarious houses of which we cannot see the slightest trace”, he added.
Residents lined up outside supermarkets in search of water and other basic supplies.
Communications have been disrupted across much of the territory, leaving relatives on the outside asking desperately on social media. “I need an update from Chiconi please, my brother, sister-in-law and niece are there and I haven’t heard from them since Saturday,” one of them said.
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French President Emmanuel Macron would hold an emergency meeting on Mayotte later on Monday. Acting health minister Geneviève Darrieussecq said Mamoudzou’s main hospital was maintaining operations after flood waters were removed, while a field clinic would be set up and 100 additional doctors would be deployed.
More than three-quarters of Mayotte’s 321,000 residents live in relative poverty. According to 2021 figures from statistics agency INSEE, Mayotte has an average annual disposable income of just over 3,000 euros per inhabitant, around eight times less than the Ile-de-France region around Paris.
