Hundreds feared dead in Mayotte as Tropical Cyclone Chido devastates island

Hundreds of people are feared dead after Tropical Cyclone Chido carved a trail of destruction in the French territory of Mayotte when it made landfall at the weekend as a storm equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane.

Chido, the most intense storm on record to strike the island territory northeast of Madagascar, off Africa’s southeastern coast, had sustained winds over 155 mph. It fell just short of being a Category 5 at peak intensity.

News reports Monday put the official death toll at 20. But a top government official on the island said the casualty count was expected to dramatically increase as authorities struggle to update the toll amid the damage.

“I think there are several hundred deaths. Perhaps we will approach a thousand,” Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville told the TV station La 1ère.

The storm had several elements that maximized the destruction. It intensified in abnormally warm waters. And then it collided directly with a densely populated island territory where three-quarters of people live below the poverty line.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou, who was named to the post just three days ago, said Chido was exceptionally severe and that it was not yet possible to confirm the number of dead and injured.

Chido’s winds badly damaged or destroyed critical infrastructure, including the island’s hospital and airport, making it more difficult for those injured to get care and for military flights to land with aid and other necessary goods - though a small number of them have gotten through and more are expected this week. Aid will be delivered by boat in the meantime, French officials said, as work begins to clear roads of debris and fallen trees and to set up a temporary hospital.

The situation is “dramatic” and “absolutely exceptional,” French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Saturday.

The damage is feared to be especially severe in the slums of Mayotte, where many undocumented immigrants live. Estelle Youssouffa, a member of France’s National Assembly representing Mayotte, tweeted Sunday that shantytowns have been “razed” and some of their inhabitants “engulfed by mud and sheet metal.” Most of the houses there were stripped of their roofs, she said, and there was no electricity, water or food.

Retailleau landed in Mayotte on Monday, French media reported. Officials in Paris scheduled a crisis meeting Monday evening at the presidential Élysée Palace.

Factors behind an intense storm

Mayotte is made up of two main islands, Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre, as well as dozens of smaller islands and islets that are not heavily inhabited. Satellite data shows that the eye of the cyclone went right over Petite-Terre, causing the worst weather and heavy damage, and later traveled to the southern half of Grande-Terre.

Chido was the 22nd tropical cyclone to pass within 30 nautical miles of Mayotte.

The cyclone quickly intensified into a powerful tropical cyclone in the middle of last week, in the southwestern Indian Ocean.

Cyclones that first make landfall in Madagascar, east of Mayotte, weaken when they reach the French territory. But this storm sneaked just to the north of Madagascar and didn’t weaken dramatically until Sunday when it slammed into Mozambique - where it brought heavy rains, flash flooding, strong winds and downed trees.

The energy derived from warm ocean waters is was concentrated over a smaller area, leading to a relatively narrow but intense, damaging wind field.

“The intensity of tropical cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean has been increasing, [and] this is consistent with what scientists expect in a changing climate - warmer oceans fuel more powerful storms,” said Liz Stephens, a professor of climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading in Britain.

“Even though the path of Cyclone Chido was well forecast several days ahead, communities on small islands like Mayotte don’t have the option to evacuate - there’s nowhere to go,” she said.

Chido derived its power from warm ocean water, being between 81 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit along the length of its track. Typically, tropical cyclones require ocean temperatures of greater than 80 degrees to form.

Sea temperatures were several degrees above average in the area where Chido restrengthened into a storm equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane near Mayotte, which may have boosted its intensity.

Consistent winds in the upper atmosphere and abundant moisture in the region also made it more likely for the storm to intensify.

Aside from passing showers, the weather in Mayotte and Mozambique looks generally calm over the next week. The risk for additional tropical cyclones through the end of the month is low.

Scenes of devastation

Residents of the island were hard to reach over the weekend amid power and signal outages. Mayotte Sen. Salama Ramia described seeing scenes of devastation in an interview with French TV station BFM late Sunday.

“Hunger is starting to rise,” said Ramia, who added that she saw entire dwellings in slums destroyed and emptied of their residents in Petite-Terre.

“Everything is devastated,” she said. “We expect the worst.”

On Monday, photos and aerial video from Mayotte, shared by broadcaster La 1ère, showed many homes with metal roofs sheared off and other neighborhoods where houses had been destroyed entirely, shredded like matchsticks.

A Facebook page served as a forum for people seeking news of missing loved ones. “I don’t have any news from my little sister and father,” said one typical message.

“The waiting is terrible,” said another.

The cultural context of the island may complicate efforts to assess the toll from the cyclone. France’s Interior Ministry said Sunday that some of the victims may already have been buried without passing through a hospital - where statistics are collected for the official death toll - because most of Mayotte’s population is Muslim and it is tradition in Islam to bury the dead as quickly as possible.

Mayotte is one of the European Union’s poorest territories, but it still represents a haven for people from even more impoverished parts of Africa, who migrate there illegally by the thousands every year. That influx has placed pressure on the French territory, brewing political grievances and expanding the population living in shantytowns that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather.

France says the undocumented population in Mayotte exceeds 100,000 people and has framed the issue as a health and security concern.

Tropical cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean

In the Southwest Indian Ocean, tropical cyclone season began on Nov. 15 and runs through April. The basin averages about nine tropical storms and four hurricanes per season.

Hurricanes and tropical cyclones are the same type of weather phenomenon - powerful heat engines driven by the evaporation of warm ocean water, which rises into the atmosphere, cools, condenses into clouds, and releases latent heat, fueling the system’s circulation and intensification.

Whether it’s called a hurricane, tropical cyclone or typhoon simply depends on the ocean basin where it forms.