Heavy death toll feared in Mayotte after Cyclone Chido devastates French archipelago

There are fears of a heavy death toll in the French overseas territory of Mayotte after Cyclone Chido caused severe damage over the weekend. The French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said at least 11 people had died, while an earlier provisional toll from Mayotte authorities, and shared with Agence France-Presse (AFP), said 14 people had been killed so far.

But speaking on local broadcaster Mayotte la Première, prefect François Xavier-Bieuville said the likely death toll from cyclone Chido’s passage across Mayotte was “definitely several hundred,” though the disruption means reaching an exact count will be difficult according to local authorities, on Sunday, December 15.

“I think there will definitely be several hundred, perhaps we will come close to a thousand or even several thousand” deaths, prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville said on the local broadcaster. He added that it would be “very difficult to reach a final count” given that most residents are Muslim, traditionally burying their dead within 24 hours.

Mayotte in the southeastern Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa is France’s poorest island and the poorest territory in the European Union. Bieuville said the worst devastation had been seen in the slums of metal shacks and informal structures that mark much of Mayotte.

The ministry said it was proving difficult to get a precise tally of the dead and injured. A hospital in Mayotte reported that nine people were in critical condition in the hospital and 246 others were injured.

Retailleau will travel to Mayotte on Monday, his office said, alongside 160 soldiers and firefighters to reinforce the 110 already deployed to the islands from mainland France ahead of the storm.

Rescue workers and supplies are being rushed in by air and sea, but their efforts are likely to be hindered by damage to airports and electricity distribution in a territory where even clean drinking water was already subject to chronic shortages.

The tropical cyclone blew through the southeastern Indian Ocean, also affecting Comoros and Madagascar. Mayotte was directly in the path of the cyclone and suffered extensive damage on Saturday, officials said. The prefect of Mayotte said it was the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte in 90 years.

Chido has now made landfall in Mozambique on the African mainland, where emergency officials had warned that 2.5 million people could be impacted in two northern provinces.

Rescue workers and supplies are being rushed in by air and sea, but their efforts are likely to be hindered by damage to airports and electricity distribution in a territory where even clean drinking water was already subject to chronic shortages.

Lockdown

Mayotte’s 320,000 residents had been ordered into lockdown as cyclone Chido bore down on the islands around 500 kilometers east of Mozambique. Its gusts of at least 226 kilometers per hour had “completely destroyed” the territory’s many shantytowns, acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said following a crisis meeting in Paris late Saturday.

Electricity poles were hurled to the ground, trees uprooted and sheet-metal roofs and walls torn off improvised structures inhabited by at least one-third of the population. “It will take several days” to establish the full death toll, but “we fear that it is heavy”, Retailleau added.

Medical personnel and equipment were being delivered from Sunday by air and sea, said the prefecture in La Réunion, another French Indian Ocean territory some 1,400 kilometers away on the other side of Madagascar. “We are continuing to evaluate the needs of emergency services and the population to organize the schedule” of deployment, the prefecture said in a statement.

‘Major damage’

More than 15,000 homes are without electricity, acting Environment Minister Agnes-Pannier Runacher has said, while telephone access is severely limited even for emergency calls. Acting Transport Minister Francois Durovray wrote on X that the Pamandzi airport on Petite-Terre, the smaller of Mayotte’s two major islands, had “suffered major damage.”

And Health Minister Genevieve Darrieussecq said the entire territory’s health system had been “severely affected”, with “major material damage to the Mayotte hospital center.”

Just northwest of Mayotte, the Comoros islands, some of which had been on red alert since Friday, were also hit, though less hard than the neighboring archipelago, said national civil security chief Abderemane Mahmoud.

The storm flooded mosques, swept away boats and damaged homes on the islands of Anjouan and Moheli.

UNICEF said it was on the ground to help the people impacted by the storm, which had already caused some damage. “Many homes, schools and health facilities have been partially or completely destroyed and we are working closely with government to ensure continuity of essential basic services,” it said in a statement.

Cyclone Chido is the latest in a string of storms worldwide to be fuelled by climate change, according to experts.

The “exceptional” cyclone was super-charged by particularly warm Indian Ocean waters, meteorologist Francois Gourand of France’s Météo France weather service told AFP.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday it was similar in strength to cyclones Gombe in 2022 and Freddy in 2023, which killed more than 60 people and at least 86 in Mozambique respectively.

It warned that some 1.7 million people were in danger, and said the remnants of the cyclone could also dump “significant rainfall” on neighboring Malawi through Monday, potentially triggering flash floods.

Zimbabwe and Zambia were also expected to see heavy rains, it added.