Tropical Cyclone Chido made landfall in Mozambique on Sunday after causing destruction in Mayotte, a French archipelago of about 300,000 people in the Indian Ocean, where at least 11 people died, France’s interior ministry said on Sunday.
The storm devastated parts of Mayotte, uprooting trees and flattening neighborhoods into debris, according to videos circulating online by French media.
The authorities were still assessing the impact of the storm on Sunday, but the prefect of Mayotte warned that the death toll could climb. Bruno Retailleau, France’s interior minister, said it will be difficult to account for all of the victims and that the government could not give a precise fatality figure at this point, Reuters reported.
The tropical cyclone had sustained wind speeds of 115 miles per hour on Sunday morning, according to the U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. That would make it a Category 3 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.
Telecommunication outages could also complicate emergency efforts in Mayotte. According to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, the archipelago has been almost entirely offline for more than 36 hours in the storm’s aftermath.
“The hospital is hit, the schools are hit. Houses are totally devastated,” the mayor of Mayotte’s capital, Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, said on Sunday to Agence France-Presse, the French news agency. The storm had injured more than 240 people, he said.
Chido made landfall in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, just south of the city of Pemba. As it pushes inland, the storm is tracking southwest and is expected to weaken significantly, according to a forecast from the Météo-France, the official French meteorological administration.
However, Cabo Delgado and the neighboring province of Nampula will still endure strong gusts, heavy rainfall and hazardous sea conditions, the forecast said.
On Saturday, Chido passed north of Madagascar and hit Mayotte, a French island territory about 500 miles east of Mozambique. French officials said that the storm caused extensive damage to an airport and other infrastructure.
President Emmanuel Macron of France said on social media that the French government was helping with relief efforts on Mayotte. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the bloc was also ready to provide support.
Mayotte has two main islands and a total land area of about 145 square miles. Its population density is the highest of France’s overseas territories.
Mayotte was still under a red cyclone alert on Sunday morning, but France’s official weather service said that skies were clearing as the storm moved away.
By Monday, the remnants of Chido are forecast to sweep into southern Malawi, according to Météo-France, bringing heavy rains, gusty winds and further risk of flooding. The system is then expected to dissipate gradually by Tuesday as it moves toward Zimbabwe.
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