Due to Hurricane Shido, communication was lost with hundreds of volunteers in Mayotte

It was not possible to contact hundreds of Red Cross volunteers and workers in the French archipelago of Mayotte, 4 days after the devastating Hurricane Chido, according to what was revealed by the French Red Cross Society.

In an email to Agence France-Presse, the association, which cooperates with 300 volunteers and 137 employees in Mayotte, said that it had been able to contact only 70 of them.

She explained, after a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in this regard, that this does not mean that they are missing at this stage, as the count is increasing and continuing.

200 missing

Union spokesman Tommaso della Longa said in statements to the BBC that what causes fear is the large number of people who have not yet announced their presence, even members of the French Red Cross.
He added: We are talking about 200 affected people whose trace has been lost and contact with them has been cut off.

Huge losses

Hurricane Chido, the strongest hurricane to hit Mayotte in 90 years, hit the French archipelago located in the Indian Ocean region on Saturday.
It destroyed a large number of homes in this region, which is considered the poorest among the French regions, and where a third of the population lives in fragile housing.

Communications were cut off in a large part of Mayotte, and the mobile phone network remained down by 80% as of Tuesday afternoon, according to authorities.

Paramedics are still searching for missing people in densely populated slums, especially in the capital’s highlands.
The authorities fear that the death toll could rise to several hundred or even a few thousand.

Night curfew

The authorities in the group of islands located between Madagascar and Mozambique impose a night curfew, and in a preliminary report yesterday evening, Monday, the authorities said that there were 21 dead and more than 1,400 wounded, and that the death toll is expected to rise.
Hurricane Shido hit the islands last Saturday, with winds reaching speeds of about 220 kilometers per hour, destroying the simple tin homes in which many of the 310,000 residents live.