Nearly 1,000 Feared Dead After Cyclone Hits France’s Mayotte

Local officials in the French territory Mayotte fear as many as 1,000 people have died after Tropical Cyclone Chido hit the archipelago off the coast of Mozambique on Saturday.

Emergency crews on Monday worked to rescue survivors amid scenes of devastation, with houses and schools destroyed and water, power and communications cut in what was the worst storm to hit the area in nearly a century. The death toll stood at 14 on Monday but local officials said it was likely higher.

“I think there are some several hundred dead, maybe we’ll get close to a thousand, even thousands,” Mayotte Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville, a senior official, told a local media channel on Sunday.

The cyclone caused extensive damage across the densely populated French territory before hitting the nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar and making landfall in Mozambique.

France’s interior minister arrived in the capital Mamoudzou on Monday, according to French media, as the nation rushed hundreds of soldiers and firefighters to assist in recovery efforts.

The cyclone hit Mayotte with winds of more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) per hour, according to forecaster Meteo-France.

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.