Rescuers were rushing to reach the isolated French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean on Monday after the archipelago was destroyed. devastated by cyclone Chidothe worst storm to hit the region in nearly a century.
While the official death toll stands at 14, authorities in Mayotte have said they fear that hundreds or even thousands of people have been killed by the storm in this densely populated territory, which is home to around 300,000, according to the Associated Press.
French authorities said entire neighborhoods — many of them poorly constructed shantytowns — had been razed and public infrastructure, including airports and hospitals, had been severely damaged, the AP reported. Damage to the airport control tower prevented only military planes from landing in Mayotte, complicating rescue operations. Electricity was also reportedly cut across the entire archipelago.
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Rescuers, soldiers, medical personnel and equipment were sent from France, as well as from the neighboring French territory of Reunion. Mayotte is considered the poorest territory under the sovereignty of any European Union country, but it still attracts significant numbers of economic migrants from neighboring countries that are even poorer, largely because of the French social protection system set up there.
The French Red Cross told CBS News partner network BBC News that around 100,000 people live in makeshift slums in Mayotte and that most of them have been completely destroyed by Chido.
The cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean began in early December and Chido hit Mayotte on Saturday as an intense tropical cyclone – the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane, the BBC reported. It made landfall Sunday evening on the much larger island nation of Madagascar, just south of Mayotte.
The BBC reported that the Chido was likely intensified due to climate change. The BBC said that although the number of annual cyclones has not increased in recent decades, more of them have been more intense, probably because warmer air and water seas provide perfect conditions to fuel larger storms.
