At least two people were killed Saturday as fierce winds from Cyclone Chido lashed French Indian Ocean territory Mayotte, with authorities warning of severe damage and residents fearing the worst.
The two confirmed deaths came on Petite-Terre, the smaller of Mayotte’s two major islands, a security source told AFP.
Also on Petite-Terre, the Pamandzi airport “suffered major damage, especially to the control tower,” acting Transport Minister Francois Durovray said on X.
Air traffic “will be restored initially with military aid planes. Ships are on the way to ensure resupply,” he added.
Across Mayotte, France’s poorest department 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Mozambique, “many of us have lost everything,” said prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville.
Chido had proved to be “the most violent and destructive cyclone we’ve seen since 1934,” he added.
France’s newly-installed Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, who has yet to name his cabinet, will hold a crisis meeting in Paris on Saturday evening, his office said.
Mayotte’s alert level has been lowered from violet — the highest- — to red to allow emergency responders to leave their bases.
But “the cyclone is not over,” prefect Bieuville warned, urging Mayotte’s roughly 320,000 people to remain “locked down”.
Communications with Mayotte are largely interrupted.
A resident on the main island of Grande Terre, Ibrahim Mcolo, had earlier described fallen electricity masts, roofs ripped off homes and trees uprooted as the first gusts struck.
“There is no more electricity,” he told AFP from his home, where he had barricaded himself in.
“Even in our house, which is well protected, the water is getting in. I can feel it trembling.”
“It is a time of emergency,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X, telling Mayotte residents that “the whole country is by your side” and thanking emergency responders.
Acting Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau posted that 140 fresh troops and firefighters would be sent to the scene on Sunday to help with recovery, more than doubling the deployment sent earlier in the week.
– Clearing the roads –
Retailleau’s office said he had spoken to the prefect by phone and ordered “full mobilisation” of police and security services to help residents and “prevent any possible looting”.
Around 1,600 police are on the ground in Mayotte, they added.
“Technical services are clearing the roads so that emergency responders can get through,” said Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, mayor of Mayotte’s capital Mamoudzou in the north-east of major island Grande-Terre.
“We have enormous material damage,” he told the BFM news channel.
Authorities had turned more than 70 schools and gyms into shelters, urging the 100,000 residents assessed as living in the most vulnerable homes to use them.
Mayotte’s many shanty towns, built on exposed slopes, were especially vulnerable to the high winds, fire union chief Abdoul Karim Ahmed Allaoui told BFM.
The eye of Cyclone Chido swept across the north of the archipelago from east to west on its way towards Mozambique on the African mainland.
It brought gusts of at least 226 kilometres per hour to some places, although weather conditions have “improved rapidly” since the cyclone moved away in late afternoon, weather authority Meteo France said.
Chido remains “extremely dangerous for the coming 18 to 24 hours” and could threaten Mozambique, it added.
More than 15,000 homes in Mayotte were without electricity, acting Environment Minister Agnes-Pannier-Runacher posted on X.
The violet alert posted on X by the local prefecture had ordered “strict lockdown for the whole population, including emergency services” from 7:00 am (0400 GMT), with road traffic also banned and the archipelago’s main airport Dzaoudzi closed.
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