“Everyone is rushing to the shops for water. There is a shortage in general,” Ali Ahmidi Yusuf, 39, told AFP on Wednesday as he walked with several bottles in hand in the community of Pomandi off the archipelago’s main island.
The authorities have said that their priority is to restore the damaged water plants.
Authorities said on Wednesday that the water supply system had been partially restored and they hoped that 50% of the island’s population would have access to water by evening.
The French government said 120 tons of food should be distributed on Wednesday, and President Emmanuel Macron plans to visit Mayotte on Thursday.
Half of the territory remains without electricity. A newly imposed curfew requires people to stay inside their homes for six hours a night to prevent looting.
“We don’t have electricity,” Ambdilvahedu Sumaila, mayor of the capital Mamoudzu, told Radio France Internationale. “When night falls, there are people who take advantage of this situation.”
Mayotte is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in slums.
desire – the strongest storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – packed winds of more than 225 km/h (140 mph) on Saturday, flattening areas where people live in metal-roofed shacks and leaving fields of mud and debris.
“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” Nasreen, a teacher who did not give her last name, told AFP in her devastated neighborhood in Pamandi.
