“Everyone is running to the shops to buy water. There is a general shortage of water,” Ali Amidi Yusuf, 39, told AFP as he walked hand in hand through the Pamanji community on the archipelago’s main island on Wednesday.
Authorities said restoring and operating damaged water treatment plants was a top priority.
Authorities said on Wednesday that the water system had been partially rebuilt and that they expected 50% of the island’s population to have access to water by the evening.
The French government said 120 tonnes of food would be distributed on Wednesday, and President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to visit Mayotte on Thursday.
Half of the territory remains without power. The newly imposed curfew requires people to stay home for six hours overnight to prevent looting.
“We have no electricity,” Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, mayor of the capital Mamoudou, told Radio France Internationale. “There are people who take advantage of the situation at night.”
Mayotte is one of the poorest regions in France, with many residents living in shantytowns.
Chido, the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years, brought winds of more than 225 km/h (140 mph) on Saturday, flattened areas where people live in shacks with sheet metal roofs and left fields of dust and debris.
“It was like a steamroller that brought everything down,” Nasreen, a teacher who declined to give her last name, told AFP from the devastated neighborhood of Farmanji.
