Many feared dead as cyclone hits French territory of Mayotte

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France is bracing for a heavy death toll in its Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, its poorest department, after cyclone Chido ravaged the island over the weekend and threatened a humanitarian catastrophe.

“I think there will surely be several hundred [deaths], we may even approach a thousand, or even thousands,” François-Xavier Bieuville, Mayotte’s prefect, told a local television channel. Winds from the tropical storm reached speeds of more than 225kmh on Saturday.

France’s interior ministry was unable to confirm Bieuville’s estimates. Caretaker interior minister Bruno Retailleau arrived in Mayotte on Monday to address the damage wreaked by Chido.

Météo France said that the storm was the strongest to hit the island territory in 90 years.

The year 2024 is on course to be the warmest recorded, with November the second-warmest month on land and at sea.

The excess heat stored in oceans has helped drive strong hurricane activity this year, with “incredibly high” temperatures in the Indian Ocean contributing to cyclone Chido’s strength, said Helen Hooker, a meteorologist at the University of Reading.

Hurricane Beryl, which caused extensive damage to some Caribbean islands and left millions without power in Texas in July, was the earliest category 5 hurricane on record.

While scientists had forecast the path of cyclone Chido last week, islanders struggled to evacuate when it hit over the weekend because they had nowhere to go. Alex Baker, another meteorologist at the university, said that the cyclone’s peak strength had been “somewhat underestimated” in part because it had intensified rapidly.

It was stronger than storms typically seen in the region at this time of year because of its relatively straight path westward over the Indian Ocean, Baker also said.

The storm skirted the island of Madagascar, which could have acted as a brake, and continued instead to pick up energy from the heat stored in the sea — one of the “key ingredients” for hurricanes. 

It then hit Mayotte — which lies west of Madagascar, between that island’s northern end and the African mainland — and also caused damage around Pemba in northern Mozambique.

Mayotte’s large number of unregistered migrants — the official population of 321,000 is considered a big underestimate — will make it hard to calculate the final death toll. Many migrants have been living in shacks that were destroyed by the cyclone.

The human tragedy also poses political challenges for President Emmanuel Macron and François Bayrou, his new prime minister, at a time when a caretaker government is in place. Bayrou held a crisis meeting on Sunday evening and Macron will do the same on Monday.

“The concern is not only for the short term and the relief and assistance that we can provide but it is also for the medium term: water supply, food supply, especially for the most sensitive places — prisons, detention centres,” said Bayrou. “All these are risk factors that pile up.”

In addition to the large number of migrants, Muslim traditions of burying the dead within 24 hours were also likely to complicate efforts to make an accurate count of the victims, the interior ministry said.

The French government has sent 800 medical staff and other personnel to the island to deal with the emergency, including 110 sent last week to prepare for the coming storm.

Paris has also dispatched a field hospital, satellite transmission equipment and electrical staff from state-owned EDF, the energy group, to help repair Mayotte’s ravaged infrastructure.