(Bloomberg) -- Rescue workers are racing to save lives and repair damage wrought by Tropical Cyclone Chido in a string of islands across the southwestern Indian Ocean.
The official death toll in the French territory of Mayotte, an archipelago off the coast of Mozambique that was hit the hardest, was 22 as of Tuesday morning, along with 1,400 injuries, local official Ambdilwahedou Soumaila told Radio France Internationale. But authorities say the number of dead is likely to rise into the hundreds in the worst storm to hit the area in nearly a century.
France instituted a curfew from 10 pm to 4 am local time starting Tuesday and President Emmanuel Macron said he would travel to Mayotte in coming days and decree a day of national mourning, while the US State Department has said it’s ready to offer assistance.
France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, arrived in the capital Mamoudzou on Monday, as the nation rushed hundreds of soldiers and firefighters to assist in recovery efforts. He said the island is “totally devastated.”
The storm developed in the Indian Ocean from Dec. 7 to 8, hitting Agalega, a dependency located 1,000 kilometers north of Mauritius on Dec. 11, before intensifying north of Madagascar, slamming into the French territory of Mayotte and making landfall in Mozambique on Sunday.
Chido hit Mauritius’ Agalega atoll last Wednesday at more than 200 kilometers per hour, a force that damaged equipment designed to record wind speed, Mauritius’ Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam told lawmakers Tuesday. The islands are home to an India-financed and constructed airstrip and jetty.
“Approximately 95% of buildings including homes, the hospital, the police and the national coast guards facilities in the north island have been destroyed,” he said in response to a parliamentary question. “Around 98% of the infrastructure are completely damaged in the south of the island.”
There were no casualties, he said.
The storm then hit the densely populated Mayotte. Around one-third of the territory’s 320,000 residents live in shantytowns, whose sheet-metal roofs are vulnerable to high winds. Mayotte is France’s poorest territory and is heavily dependent on aid from Paris.
Chido made landfall in northern Mozambique on Dec. 15 south of Pemba port, dumping more than 250 millimeters of rain in 24 hours. At least 34 people died, with more than 35,000 houses completely or partially destroyed, according to a preliminary assessment from the southeast African nation’s disaster management institute on Tuesday.
The storm weakened as it moved inland and will dissipate near Zimbabwe later on Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.
Mozambique has been rocked by weeks of protests against what opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane said were fraudulent elections on Oct. 9. Mondlane was set to announce a new round of demonstrations on Monday, but Chido’s wreckage prompted him to postpone these until Dec. 23, by when the Constitutional Council is due to validate the election results.
--With assistance from Matthew Hill.
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