France rushes aid to Mayotte, where hundreds or even thousands died in Cyclone Chido

CAPE TOWN – France rushed by ship and military aircraft to its impoverished overseas territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean on Monday after the island was battered by its worst storm in nearly a century.

Authorities in Mayotte fear hundreds and possibly thousands of people have died in Cyclone Chidoalthough the official death toll on Monday morning stood at 14. Rescue teams and medical personnel have been sent to the island off Africa’s east coast from France and from the nearby French territory of Reunion, as well as tons of supplies.

French TV station TF1 reported on Monday morning that Interior Minister Bruno Retaileau had arrived in Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte.

“It will take days and days to determine the human toll,” he told French media.

French authorities said more than 800 more personnel were expected to arrive in the coming days as rescuers combed the devastation caused by Chido when it hit the densely populated archipelago of about 300,000 people on Saturday.

Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville, the top French government official in Mayotte, told local TV station Mayotte la 1ere Sunday that the death toll was several hundred people and could even be in the thousands.

He said Mayotte’s poor slums of metal sheds and other informal structures had suffered terrible damage and authorities were struggling to get an accurate count of the dead and injured after the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte since the 1930s.

Entire neighborhoods have been flattened, while public infrastructure such as the main airport and hospital have been badly damaged and electricity has been knocked out, French authorities said. The damage to the airport’s control tower means that only military aircraft can fly into Mayotte, complicating the response.

Mayotte is France’s poorest department and is considered the poorest region in the EU, but it is a target for economic migration from even poorer countries such as nearby Comoros and even Somalia due to a better standard of living and the French welfare system.

Bieuville, the Mayotte prefect, said it would be extremely difficult to count all the dead and that many may never be registered, partly because of the Muslim tradition of burying people within 24 hours of their death and also because of many undocumented migrants living on the island.

Chido skinned through the southwestern Indian Ocean on Friday and Saturday, which also affects the nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar. However, Mayotte was directly in the path of the cyclone and took the lead. Chido brought winds of over 220 km/h (136 mph), according to the French weather service, making it a Category 4 cyclone, the second strongest on the scale.

It made landfall in Mozambique on the African mainland late Sunday, where authorities and aid agencies have said more than 2 million people could be affected in another poor country where health facilities are already limited. Mozambican media reported that three people had died in the northern part of the country where the cyclone made landfall, but said it was a very early figure.

Further inland, Malawi and Zimbabwe have also made preparations for possible evacuations due to flooding, while Chido continues its easterly track, although the cyclone has weakened as it passes over land.

December to March is cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean, and southern Africa has been hit by a number of strong ones in recent years. Cyclone Idai in 2019 killed more than 1,300 people, most in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Cyclone Freddy left more than 1,000 dead in several countries in the Indian Ocean and southern Africa last year.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa