The worst cyclone ever hit Mayotte for 90 years, has devastated health services in the French Indian Ocean territory, leaving the hospital badly damaged as rescuers rushed to search for survivors and family members searched for news of their loved ones.
“The hospital suffered significant water damage and destruction, particularly in the surgical, intensive care, maternity and emergency departments,” said French Health Minister Geneviève Darrieussecq. France 2 on Monday, adding that “medical centers were also non-operational.”
Cyclone Chido devastated many shanty towns in the area, with hundreds of people are believed to have died. The powerful cyclone caused extensive damage to Mayotte airport, cutting power, water and communications when it hit France’s poorest territory on Saturday.
The official death toll as of Monday morning was 20, according to local television channel Mayotte la Première. However, the prefect of Mayotte, François-Xavier Bieuville, also told the channel that he expected the final toll to reach “nearly a thousand, even several thousand”, and that it was of the worst cyclone to hit the islands since 1934.
Videos of the storm showed metal shacks bending like cardboard in the strong wind and roofs collapsing inwards on flooded homes.
Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, mayor of Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte, told Agence France-Presse that the storm “spared nothing”. “The hospital is affected. Schools are affected. The houses are totally devastated,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday evening he would declare a day of national mourning and travel to Mayotte in the coming days. “It’s about facing emergencies and starting to prepare for the future,” he wrote on X.
The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, landed in Mayotte on Monday morning, with 160 soldiers and firefighters to reinforce the 110 already deployed.
“Don’t panic,” he told a meeting of officials. “I am counting on you… When you feel discouraged, when you are tired, remember that we are here… Each of you is committed to this, to this French ideal.”
Chido was packing winds of at least 225 km/h when it reached Mayotte, located between Mozambique and Madagascar. At least a third of the territory’s 320,000 inhabitants live in shanty towns, where shacks were razed by the storm.
Around 100,000 people are undocumented migrants, according to the French Interior Ministry. They come mainly from the Comoros, the nearest island of which is about 70 kilometers away. It is therefore difficult to establish how many people were affected.
Ousseni Balahachi, a former nurse, said some people did not dare go out to seek help, “fearing it was a trap” intended to expel them from Mayotte. Many stayed behind “until the last minute” when it proved too late to escape the cyclone, she added.
A Facebook group for loved ones seeking news of their loved ones had 13,000 members as of Monday evening as people posted desperate pleas for information.
“Everything is destroyed,” Zaya Toumbou, who competed as Miss Mayotte in the Miss France beauty pageant, said on her Instagram Stories on Sunday. She tried all day to get in touch with her loved ones while the final of the competition was taking place and finally received a message from her father on Sunday evening: “I lost everything”.
“The situation is chaotic,” said Ben Ahmada, logistics manager in mainland France, whose family in Mayotte called him Monday morning after two days without network to tell him they had survived.
“They are cut off from the world, so they have no news; they have no information; they have no networks; they have no water; they have no electricity; they have nothing to eat. It’s a disaster.”
A first aid plane arrived in Mayotte on Sunday with 3 tons of medical equipment, blood for transfusions and 17 medical personnel, according to authorities in Reunion, another French territory in the Indian Ocean, about 870 miles from Mayotte, which serves as a logistical base for the rescue operation.
Two military planes were to follow the first relief flight, while a navy patrol boat was also to take off from Reunion.
Regional Red Cross organization PIROI pledged support, while EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was “ready to provide support in the days to come”.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said WHO “stands ready to support communities in need of essential health care.”
Chido is the latest in a series of global storms fueled by the climate crisis, experts say. The “exceptional” cyclone was amplified by the particularly warm waters of the Indian Ocean, meteorologist François Gourand of the Météo-France weather service told AFP.
The cyclone hit Mozambique on Sunday, where authorities said it left three people dead.
“Many homes, schools and health facilities have been partially or completely destroyed,” said UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.
Two people were killed in Malawi when the storm swept through the country on Monday, according to local television station MBC.
The United Nations humanitarian agency Ocha said the cyclone’s remnants could also bring heavy rain to Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Southern Africa suffered its worst drought in at least a century earlier this year, with 27 million people struggling to feed themselves until the next harvest due in April.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report