Cyclone Chido’s Devastation of Mayotte Was Immediate and Decades Coming

A woman looks at a destroyed home in Mamoudzou, Mayotte, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Adrienne Surprenant)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

6:15 PM EST, December 20, 2024

The devastation from Cyclone Chido that shattered corrugated metal shacks and thousands of lives on the island of Mayotte was both immediate and long coming.

Residents of Mayotte, one of 12 tiny overseas territories remaining from one of the great global empires, have complained for decades of neglect by bureaucrats in France.

Authorities have confirmed 35 deaths from Cyclone Chido’s landfall Sunday, but fear hundreds or thousands may be dead.

The shacks of corrugated metal stood no chance in the Kaweni slum on the outskirts of the capital, Mamoudzou, where residents are still taking stock of their shattered lives.

Mayotte, the poorest place in the European Union, has struggled to care for migrants from the nearby independent Comoros islands. They have been moving to Mayotte — the only part of the Comoros that voted to remain part of France in a 1974 referendum — and last year, the government mobilized 2,000 troops and police to carry out mass expulsions, destroy slums and eradicate gangs.

This week, survivors lined up to collect water. Once among the island’s rare riches — with rivers and springs nestled between mountains and forests — water has grown scare as mismanagement and climate change have taken their toll.

Mayotte has had its driest year since 1997, according to the national weather service. Even before Chico, indoor plumbing only worked from 4 p.m. to 10 a.m. once every three days on an island territory of about 350,000 people.

Women rested Thursday on a footbridge over a stream filled with debris in the Kaweni slum after families rushed to prepare food, wash dishes, clean their homes and anything else involving water.

Those living in neighborhoods without plumbing lined up at public taps with buckets, plastic jerrycans, reused bottles — anything to collect water. Then for 48 hours, they were dry again.