Emergency workers are scrambling to find survivors and restore services to Mayotte, an overseas department of France in the Indian Ocean where more than 1,000 are feared dead from the worst cyclone to hit the islands in almost a century.
French ships and military aircraft rushed to the islands on Dec. 16 after cyclone Chido ripped through parts of Mayotte with winds of more than 136 mph, according to the French weather service.
Some areas remained inaccessible to rescue workers on Dec. 16, according to French civil security spokesperson Alexandre Jouassard.
He told France 2 TV: “The next minutes and hours are very important. We are used to working in these conditions, and a few days after, you have pockets of survivors.”
French President Emmanuel Macron is due to hold an emergency meeting about Mayotte at about 6 p.m. in Paris, according to BFMTV.
Mayotte, which has been under French rule since 1841, has a population of about 321,000 and is made up of two main islands, located in the Indian Ocean midway between the coast of Mozambique on the African mainland and the large island nation of Madagascar.
The makeshift houses of islanders have been decimated by the winds, with wreckage strewn across Mayotte’s hillsides.
Roofs have been damaged by flying coconut trees and the corridors of hospitals have flooded with water, according to photos shared by local media and police.
“It was the wind, the wind blowing, and I was panicked, I screamed, ‘We need help, we need help.’ I was screaming because I could see the end coming for me,” John Balloz, who lives in the capital, Mamoudzou, told Reuters.
With water supplies cut, people lined up outside grocery stores on Dec. 16 in search of bottled water and basic provisions, residents told French television stations.
After it hit Mayotte, cyclone Chido made landfall in northern Mozambique, where it quickly weakened and was reclassified as a tropical storm on Dec. 15, but not before it had destroyed several houses, according to authorities.
The prefect of Mayotte, François-Xavier Bieuville, said that deaths will definitely reach the high hundreds and possibly even thousands.
Establishing the death toll is made harder because many residents of Mayotte are Muslims, who quickly bury family members who die, in accordance with Islamic religious rules.
Images from Mayotte showed boats upended, cars buried under rubble, and people cowering under tables when the cyclone hit.
The territory is a hotbed of illegal migration from nearby Comoros and Somalia despite being France’s poorest department and the poorest territory in the European Union. Migrants are drawn there thanks to the higher living standards and the potential to access France’s welfare system.
This has led to Mayotte in recent years becoming a stronghold of support for Marine Le Pen and the National Rally party, with 60 percent voting for her in the 2022 presidential election runoff.
Sea and air operations were underway to transport relief and equipment, with some coming from Réunion, another French overseas department, according to authorities in Paris.
However, Mayotte’s main airport remained closed to civilian flights on the morning of Dec. 16, making the logistics more difficult.
French Health Minister Geneviève Darrieussecq told BFMTV that floodwaters had been removed from the central hospital, but that conditions there remain difficult.
She said 100 health reservists were being deployed to Mayotte.
December to March is cyclone season in the southwestern Indian Ocean, and the area has regularly been blasted by storms in recent years.
In 2019, cyclone Idai killed more than 1,300 people in Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, and in 2023, cyclone Freddy left more than 1,000 people dead across several countries in the Indian Ocean.
