France is sending aid by sea and military aircraft to its overseas territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean after the island was hit by its worst storm in nearly a century.
Mayotte authorities fear hundreds, if not thousands, have died in Cyclone Chido, although the official death toll as of Monday morning was 14. Rescue teams and medical personnel have been sent to the island, located east of Africa, from France and the neighboring French territory of Réunion, along with tons of supplies.
French television channel TF1 reported Monday morning that Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau had arrived in Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte.
“It will take days and days to establish the human toll,” he told French media.
French authorities said more than 800 additional personnel were expected in the coming days to help rescuers survey the damage caused by Chido when it struck the densely populated archipelago of about 300,000 people on Saturday.
Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville, a senior French government official in Mayotte, said the death toll was in the hundreds and could be in the thousands.
He said tin shantytowns and other informal structures in Mayotte had suffered terrible damage and authorities were struggling to establish an accurate count of the dead and injured after the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte since the 1930s.
Entire neighborhoods were devastated, while public infrastructure such as the main airport and hospital were badly damaged and electricity supplies were cut off, French authorities said. Damage to the airport control tower means that only military aircraft can land in Mayotte, complicating the response.
Mayotte is France’s poorest department and is considered the poorest territory in the European Union, but it is a target for economic migration from even poorer countries such as the neighbouring Comoros and even Somalia because of better living standards and France’s welfare system.
Bieuville, the prefect of Mayotte, said it would be extremely difficult to count all the dead and that many may never be recorded, partly because of the Muslim tradition of burying people within 24 hours of their death and also because of the presence of many undocumented migrants living on the island.
Chido devastated the south-west Indian Ocean on Friday and Saturday, also affecting the neighbouring islands of Comoros and Madagascar. Mayotte was directly in the path of the cyclone and suffered its consequences. Chido brought winds of more than 220 km/h, according to the French weather service, classifying it as a Category 4 cyclone, the second strongest on the scale.
It made landfall in Mozambique on the African continent late Sunday, where officials and aid agencies estimated that more than 2 million people could be affected in another poor country with already limited health infrastructure. Mozambican media reported that three people had died in the north of the country where the cyclone made landfall, but said that was a very early toll.
Further inland, Malawi and Zimbabwe also took steps to prepare for possible evacuations due to flooding as Chido continued its eastward trajectory, although the cyclone weakened as it crossed land.
December to March is cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean, and southern Africa has been hit by a series of severe cyclones in recent years. Cyclone Idai in 2019 killed more than 1,300 people, mostly in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Cyclone Freddy killed more than 1,000 people in several Indian Ocean and southern African countries last year.