Thousands of people in Mayotte are without water due to curfew imposed

Thousands of people are still without water in Mayotte as rescue workers race to find missing people after Cyclone Chido devastated the French Indian Ocean region.

Preliminary figures from France’s interior ministry show 22 people have died, but the prefect of Mayotte has warned that the death toll could rise into the thousands.

Health workers are worried that infectious diseases could spread, as residents have reported a shortage of clean drinking water and shops are rationing supplies. More aid is due to arrive on Wednesday.

Islanders spent the first night under a curfew between 22:00 local time on Tuesday and 04:00 on Wednesday (19:00 and 01:00 GMT) as part of measures to prevent looting.

“Everyone is running to the shops for water. In general there is a shortage,” Ali Ahmadi Youssef, 39, told AFP as he walked with a few bottles in his hand in the community of Pamandzi near the archipelago’s main island on Wednesday.

Half the area remains without electricity. Officials have said their priority is to restart damaged water plants.

On Wednesday, officials said the water system had been partially restored and they expected 50% of the island’s population to have access to water by the evening.

The French government said 120 tonnes of food was to be distributed on Wednesday, while President Emmanuel Macron is due to visit Mayotte on Thursday.

Mayotte is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in shanty towns.

Chido- The worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – Winds gusted to more than 225 km/h (140 mph) on Saturday, leveling areas where people lived in huts with metal roofs and leaving fields of dirt and debris.

“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” Nasreen, a teacher who declined to give her last name, told AFP in her destroyed neighborhood in Pamandzi.

Another witness to the storm told Reuters that roofs were “blown off as if they were pieces of paper”.

Diego Plato, a photographer with the French Army’s 5th Foreign Regiment, said, “A gust of wind broke the window and tore out a wooden plank. The planks were 2 meters by 3 meters (6.5 by 9.8 ft).”

He said many of the Legion’s buildings are no longer functional because they no longer have roofs.

Rescue workers are now searching for survivors in ruins such as the capital Mamoudzou, as well as blocking roads and trying to clear debris and fallen trees.

On Wednesday morning, Mamoudzou residents whose homes escaped the storm nailed sheets of metal onto damaged roofs.

Mayotte’s prefect Francois-Xavier Beauville earlier told local media The death toll may increase significantly Once the damage has been fully assessed.

He warned that this would be “certainly several hundred” and could reach thousands.

Chido killed at least 45 people in Mozambique and at least seven in Malawi, according to those countries’ disaster management departments.

Authorities have said Mayotte’s relatively low official death toll is due to many areas being inaccessible and some victims having already been buried.

The difficulty is compounded by uncertainty about the size of Mayotte’s population.

The area officially has 320,000 residents, but authorities estimate that around 100,000 to 200,000 undocumented migrants may live there.

Preliminary figures from the Interior Ministry show that 1,373 people were injured in Mayotte.

France’s newly appointed Prime Minister François Bayrou told parliament on Tuesday that “200 people were seriously injured and 1,500 were seriously injured”.

“I have never seen such a huge disaster on national soil,” Bayru later said in a post. x,

“I think about the children whose homes have been washed away, whose schools have almost all been destroyed and whose parents are extremely distressed.”

The government said it was sending supplies via an air bridge from its other Indian Ocean territory, Reunion Island.

On Wednesday, 100 tons of food are to be distributed on the large island of Grand-Terre in Mayotte, while 20 tons of food are to be distributed on the small island of Petite-Terre.

A support and assistance ship from the French Navy is also due to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday morning with 180 tonnes of cargo.

The ferry connecting Mayotte’s two main islands resumed services on Wednesday, allowing some people stranded by the storm to return to their families.

“I haven’t heard a word from my staff in five days,” a landowner taking a ferry, who declined to give his name, told Reuters. “It’s back to the Stone Age.”

Meanwhile, in Malawi – where Chido headed after moving from Mayotte – officials say seven people were killed.

A statement from the disaster management department said 20 out of 29 districts in the country had suffered “light to severe damage”, affecting about 35,000 people.

Number of deaths and level of destruction lower than neighboring Mozambique Where officials have put the death toll at 34.

Experts say that seasonal storms like Chido are increasing in strength due to warm ocean water.

The cyclone poses another challenge for the government after months of political turmoil Bayeru was appointed last week following the ouster of the former prime minister. Michel Barnier.