Cyclone leaves health services devastated in French Indian Ocean territory

The worst cyclone to hit Mayotte for 90 years has devastated the French Indian Ocean territory's health services, France's health minister said yesterday, leaving the hospital severely damaged as rescuers raced to find survivors and family members searched for news of their loved ones.

- Rachel Savage

"The hospital has suffered major water damage and destruction, notably in the surgical, intensive care, maternity and emergency units," Geneviève Darrieussecq told France 2, adding that "medical centres were also non-operational".

Cyclone Chido laid waste to many of the territory's shantytowns, with hundreds believed dead. The powerful cyclone caused extensive damage to Mayotte's airport, cutting off electricity, water and communication links when it battered France's poorest territory on Saturday.

The official death toll is 20 people, according to the local TV station Mayotte la Première. However, Mayotte's prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville, told the broadcaster that he expected the final death toll to reach "close to a thousand or even several thousand", and that it was the worst cyclone to hit the islands since 1934.

Videos of the storm showed metal shacks folding like cardboard in the ferocious wind and roofs collapsing inwards into flooded homes.

Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of Mayotte's capital, Mamoudzou, told Agence France-Presse the storm "spared nothing". "The hospital is hit, the schools are hit. Houses are totally devastated," he said.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, attended a crisis meeting on the disaster in Paris, according to the French BFM TV station.

The country's interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, landed in Mayotte yesterday morning, with 160 soldiers and firefighters reinforcing 110 already deployed.