Emergency workers are scrambling to find survivors and restore services to Mayotte, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean where more than a thousand are feared dead from the worst cyclone to hit the islands in almost a century.
French ships and military aircraft are rushing to the islands on Monday after Cyclone Chido ripped through parts of the territory with winds of more than 136 mph, according to the French weather service.
Some areas remain inaccessible to rescue workers on Monday, 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 about midway between the coast of Mozambique on the African mainland and the large island nation of Madagascar.
The makeshift houses of islanders had been decimated by the winds, with wreckage strewn across Mayotte’s hillsides.
Roofs had been damaged by flying coconut trees and the corridors of hospitals were flooded with water, according to pictures 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, residents queued outside grocery stores on Monday 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 Sunday, but not before it destroyed several houses, authorities said.
The prefect of Mayotte, Francois-Xavier Bieuville, said that deaths will definitely reach the high hundreds and possibly even thousands.
Establishing the death toll is made harder because Muslims quickly bury family members who perish 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 islands are 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 Rassemblement National 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 Reunion, another French overseas territory, authorities in Paris said.
Mayotte’s main airport, however, remained closed to civilian flights on Monday morning, making the logistics more difficult.
French Health Minister Genevieve Darrieussecq told BFMTV that floodwaters had been removed from the central hospital, but conditions there remain difficult.
She added that 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 in Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe and last year, Cyclone Freddy left more than 1,000 dead across several countries in the Indian Ocean.
