Thousands were feared dead Monday after Cyclone Chido tore through Mayotte, a French Indian Ocean territory, cutting off swaths of the population.
Wooden beams from collapsed buildings littered the landscape, entangled with fallen branches and corrugated metal and plastic, in video recorded on the archipelago, which is around 500 miles off southeast Africa, between Madagascar and Mozambique.
Coconut trees bend under the gusts of wind, their tall, towering trunks swaying against the gray sky. The extent of the destruction can be seen from above — a chaotic, colorful blanket of scattered debris from homes and buildings.
Several thousand people may have been killed, Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville told Mayotte La 1ère, a local broadcaster, on Sunday.
Separately, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said it could “take days and days” to establish an exact death toll as he spoke with journalists on his arrival in Mayotte, where he is holding talks with the authorities.
Cyclone Chido was a category 4 storm that brought winds in excess of 136 mph to the island, according to a bulletin on Météo-France, the country's weather service. It weakened after it hit mainland Africa, the service added.Amid the wreckage, the only sounds heard on video from scene are the calls of birds stepping over debris that litters the ground. Wooden fishing boats of various sizes have washed ashore on the beaches, and the Karihani inter-island ferry lies stranded, entwined with debris at an awkward angle along the shore.
Utility poles have also been ripped from the roadside, and a wire flies loose in the wind, whipping through the air and the heavy rain.
Cyclones, also known as typhoons and hurricanes, are enormous heat engines of wind and rain that feed on warm ocean water and moist air.
All three are storm systems with winds exceeding 74 mph, but the name depends on where in the world the storm happens. Hurricanes happen in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Northeast Pacific, typhoons occur in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, and cyclones take place in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, according to the U.S.’ National Ocean Service.
Cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean usually spans mid-November to the end of April, according to Météo-France.
Experts have warned that climate change is worsening the atmospheric effect. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, boosting the potential for warmer, wetter and more intense atmospheric river storms with greater flood risks and higher costs.
In 2023, over 1000 people died across Malawi and Mozambique after Cyclone Freddy, the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded, barreled 5,000 miles across the Indian Ocean, where it pummeled Madagascar and Réunion before it struck the African mainland.