Tens of thousands of people without water in Mayotte

Tens of thousands of people remain without access to water in Mayotte after the French Indian Ocean territory was devastated by Cyclone Chido, as rescuers race to find missing people.

Preliminary figures from France’s Interior Ministry report that 22 people have died, but the prefect of Mayotte has warned the figure could rise to thousands.

Health workers fear infectious diseases could spread as residents have reported shortages of drinking water and stores are rationing supplies. More help is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday.

The islanders spent a first night under curfew between 10:00 p.m. local time on Tuesday and 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday (7:00 p.m. and 01:00 a.m. GMT) as part of measures to prevent looting.

“Everyone is running to the shops for water. There is a general shortage,” Ali Ahmidi Youssouf, 39, told AFP as he walked with some bottles in his hand in the community of Pamandzi, off the main island. of the archipelago.

Authorities have said their priority is to get damaged aquatic plants back into operation.

On Wednesday, authorities said the water system had been partially restored and they expected 50% of the island’s population to have access to water by the evening.

The French government said 120 tonnes of food will be distributed on Wednesday, while President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to visit Mayotte on Thursday.

Half of the territory is still without electricity. A recently imposed curfew forces people to stay in their homes for six hours at night to prevent looting.

“We don’t have electricity,” Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, mayor of the capital, Mamoudzou, told Radio France International. “When night falls, there are people who take advantage of that situation.”

Mayotte is one of the poorest areas in France and many of its residents live in slums.

Desire – the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – brought winds of more than 225 km/h (140 mph) on Saturday, flattening areas where people live in shacks with sheet metal roofs and leaving behind fields of dirt and debris.

“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” Nasrine, a teacher who did not want to give her last name, told AFP in her destroyed neighborhood of Pamandzi.

Another witness to the storm told Reuters that roofs “flew away like pieces of paper.”

“A gust of wind broke the window and tore a wooden board. The boards measured 2 by 3 meters,” said Diego Plato, photographer of the 5th Foreign Regiment of the French Legion.

He added that many of the legion’s buildings can no longer function because they no longer have roofs.

Rescuers are now searching for survivors in the ruins, such as in Mamoudzou, while trying to unblock roads and remove debris and fallen trees.

On Wednesday morning, Mamoudzou residents whose homes survived the storm banged metal sheets over their damaged roofs.

Francois-Xavier Bieuville, prefect of Mayotte, previously told local media The death toll could increase significantly. once the damage has been fully assessed.

He warned that “it would definitely be several hundred” and could reach thousands.

Chido also killed at least 45 people in Mozambique and at least 13 in Malawi, according to those countries’ disaster management departments.

Authorities have said the relatively low number of victims in Mayotte is because many areas are inaccessible and some victims are already buried.

The difficulty is compounded by uncertainty over the size of Mayotte’s population.

The territory officially has 320,000 inhabitants, but authorities estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 undocumented immigrants may live there.

The first figures from the Ministry of the Interior indicate that 1,373 people were injured in Mayotte.

The new French Prime Minister, François Bayrou, told parliament on Tuesday that there were “200 seriously injured and 1,500 injured in a state of relative urgency.”

“I have never seen a disaster of this magnitude on national soil,” Bayrou later said in a post on unknown.

“I think of the children whose homes have been razed, whose schools have been almost all destroyed and whose parents are extremely distraught.”

The government said it was sending supplies via airlift from its other territory in the Indian Ocean, Reunion Island.

On Wednesday, 100 tons of food will be distributed on the larger island of Grand-Terre in Mayotte, while 20 tons will be distributed on the smaller island of Petite-Terre.

A French navy support and assistance ship with 180 tonnes of cargo on board is also scheduled to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday morning.

The ferry linking Mayotte’s two main islands resumed service on Wednesday, allowing some people trapped by the storm to return to their families.

“I haven’t heard a word from my employees in five days,” a landowner on the ferry, who did not want to give his name, told Reuters. “It’s a return to the Stone Age.”

Meanwhile, in Malawi, where Chido headed after passing through Mayotte, authorities say 13 people died.

As many as 20 of the country’s 29 districts have suffered “mild to severe damage” affecting around 35,000 people, according to a statement from the disaster management department.

The number of deaths and the level of destruction. It is lower than in neighboring Mozambique where authorities put the death toll at 45.

Experts say seasonal storms like Chido are intensifying due to warming ocean waters.

The cyclone poses another challenge for the government after months of political turmoil, with Bayrou was appointed last week following the dismissal of the former Prime Minister Michel Barnier.