France’s President Emmanuel Macron tours cyclone-battered Mayotte, meets survivors pleading for help

Mamoudzou, Mayotte — France’s President Emmanuel Macron traveled Thursday to the Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte to survey the devastation that Cyclone Chido wrought across the French territory as thousands of people tried to cope without bare essentials such as water or electricity.

“Mayotte is demolished,” an airport security agent told Macron as soon as he stepped off the plane.

The security agent, Assane Haloi, said her family members, including small children, are without water or electricity and have nowhere to go after the strongest cyclone in nearly a century ripped through the French territory of Mayotte off the coast of Africa on Saturday.

“There’s no roof, there’s nothing. No water, no food, no electricity. We can’t even shelter, we are all wet with our children covering ourselves with whatever we have so that we can sleep,” she said, asking for emergency aid.

Macron got a helicopter tour of the damage and was to spend Thursday night on the far-flung French territory. After flying over the destruction, he headed to the hospital in Mamoudzou, Mayotte’s capital, to meet medical staff and patients.

Wearing a traditional Mayotte scarf on his white shirt and tie, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the French president listened to people asking for help. A member of the medical staff told him some people hadn’t had a drink of water for 48 hours.

Some residents also expressed agony at not knowing about those who have died or are still missing, partly because of the Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.

“We’re dealing with open-air mass graves,” Mayotte lawmaker Estelle Youssoufa told reporters. “There are no rescuers, no one has come to recover the buried bodies.”

Some survivors and aid groups have described hasty burials and the stench of bodies.

Macron acknowledged that many who died hadn’t been reported. He said phone services will be repaired “in the coming days” so that people can report their missing loved ones.

French authorities have said at least 31 people died and more than 1,500 people were injured, more than 200 critically. But it’s feared hundreds or even thousands of people have died in total.

Abdou Houmadou, 27, said emergency aid was needed immediately, not Macron’s presence.

“Mr. President, what I’d like to tell you… is I think the spending you made from Paris to Mayotte would have been better spent to help the people,” he said.

Another resident, Ahamadi Mohammed, said Macron’s visit “is a good thing because he’ll be able to see by himself the damage.”

“I think that we’ll then get significant aid to try and get the island back on its feet,” the 58-year-old said.

Macron’s office said four tons of food and medical aid, as well as additional rescuers, were aboard the president’s flight. A navy ship was due to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday with another 180 tons of aid and equipment, according to the French military.

People living in a large slum on the outskirts of Mamoudzou were some of the hardest hit by the cyclone. Many lost their houses, some lost friends.

Nassirou Hamidouni sheltered in his house when the cyclone hit.

His neighbor was killed when his house collapsed on him and his six children. Hamidouni and others dug through the rubble to reach them.

The 28-year-old father of five is now trying to rebuild his own house, which was also destroyed.

He believes the death toll is much higher than what’s officially being reported, given the severity of what he lived through.

“It was very hard,” he said.

Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean between mainland Africa’s east coast and northern Madagascar, is France’s poorest territory.

The cyclone devastated entire neighborhoods and many people ignored the warnings, thinking the storm wouldn’t be so extreme.

Mayotte has more than 320,000 residents according to the French government. Most are Muslim and French authorities have estimated another 100,000 migrants live there.

Mayotte is the only part of the Comoros archipelago that voted to remain a part of France in a 1974 referendum.

Over the last decade, the French territory has seen a massive influx of migrants from the neighboring islands – the independent nation of Comoros, which is one of the world’s poorest countries.