Rescuers were in a rush on Monday to reach the remote French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean after the islands destroyed by Cyclone Chidothe worst storm to hit the area in nearly a century.
While the official death toll stood at 14, officials in Mayotte said they feared hundreds, if not thousands of people had been killed by the storm in the densely populated area, which is home to around on 300,000, according to The Associated Press.
French authorities said entire neighborhoods – many of which included well-built slum settlements – had been flattened, and public infrastructure including airports and hospitals had been damaged. badly, the AP said. Damage to the airport's control tower meant that only military aircraft could land in Mayotte, complicating the rescue response. It was also reported that electricity was knocked out across the islands.
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Rescuers, soldiers, medical personnel and supplies were sent from France, as well as from the neighboring French Reunion region. Mayotte is considered the poorest territory under the jurisdiction of any country in the European Union, but it still attracts large numbers of economic migrants from neighboring countries that are even poorer, largely because the French state welfare system is implemented there.
The French Red Cross told CBS News partner network BBC News that around 100,000 people live in makeshift slums on Mayotte, most of which have been completely destroyed by Chido.
Cyclone season began in the southwest Indian Ocean in early December, and Chido hit Mayotte on Saturday as an intense tropical cyclone – equivalent to a category-4 hurricane, the BBC reported. It made landfall on the much larger island nation of Madagascar, just south of Mayotte, late on Sunday.
The BBC said that Chido was likely to have increased as a result of climate change. The BBC said that although the number of annual cyclones has not increased in recent decades, more of them have become more intense, possibly because warmer air and seawater provide perfect conditions for to fuel larger storms.
