France Sends Urgent Aid to Mayotte After Cyclone Chido Claims Hundreds of Lives

Cape Town: On Monday, France swiftly deployed aid via ship and military aircraft to its impoverished overseas territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, following the island's devastation from its most severe storm in nearly a century.

Authorities in Mayotte are concerned that Cyclone Chido may have claimed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, though the official death toll on Monday morning was reported at 14. Rescue teams, medical personnel, and large quantities of supplies have been sent to the island from France and the nearby French territory of Reunion.

A French television station reported on 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 stated that over 800 additional personnel were expected to arrive in the coming days as rescuers continue to search through the destruction left by Cyclone Chido, which struck the densely populated archipelago of approximately 300,000 people on Saturday.

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

He said Mayotte’s poor slums of metal shacks 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 like the main airport and hospital have been badly damaged and the electricity supply has been knocked out, French authorities said. The damage to the airport control tower means only military aircraft can fly into Mayotte, complicating the response.

Mayotte is France’s poorest department and is regarded as the poorest territory in the European Union, but it is a target for economic migration from even poorer countries like nearby Comoros and even Somalia because of a better standard of living and the French welfare system.

Bieuville, the Mayotte prefect, said it would be extremely hard to count all the dead and many might never be recorded, partly due to the Muslim tradition of burying people within 24 hours of their deaths and also because of many undocumented migrants living on the island.

Chido ripped through the southwestern Indian Ocean on Friday and Saturday, also affecting the nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar. Mayotte was directly in the cyclone’s path, though, and took the brunt. Chido brought winds in excess of 220 kph (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 may be impacted in another poor country where health facilities are already limited. Mozambique media reported 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 have also made preparations for possible evacuations because of flooding as Chido continues its eastern trajectory, although the cyclone has weakened as it passes over land.

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

(with agency inputs)