MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte (news agencies) — They clustered around water taps, rare sources of electricity and each other. Four days after the strongest cyclone in nearly a century ripped through the French island territory of Mayotte off the coast of Africa, survivors recalled the horror of the storm that caught many by surprise.
media journalists reached the humid capital before dusk, as French military personnel and others rushed to clear fallen palm trees from roads ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit Thursday.
Streets were lined with the rubble of informal settlements whose migrant populations complicated the efforts to count the dead.
“We lived something very apocalyptic,” said Samuel Anli, 28, who rode out Saturday’s storm in a windowless office for hours as shrieking wind gusts exceeding 220 kph (136 mph) tore away doors and walls.
He and others held the door to their small office shut, fearing for their lives. “We thought if it lasted one or two hours more we’d all be dead,” he said. His home was partly destroyed and three of his relatives were injured by flying metal.
On Wednesday, French authorities described the storm as a “catastrophe of exceptional intensity.”
“The island is devastated,” they said, putting the confirmed death toll at 31 but noting that it could be much higher, partly because of the Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.
Some survivors and aid groups have described hasty burials and the stench of bodies.
Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean between mainland Africa’s east coast and northern Madagascar, is France’s poorest territory and is a magnet for migrants hoping to reach Europe.
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