“Everyone is rushing to the stores for water. There is a general shortage,” Ali Ahmidi Youssouf, 39, told AFP on Wednesday while walking with a few bottles in his hand in the community of Pamandzi off the archipelago’s main island.

Half the territory remains without power. The authorities have said their priority is to get damaged water plants back up and running.

On Wednesday, authorities said the water system had been partially re-established and they hoped 50% of the island’s population will have access to water by the evening.

The French government said 120 tonnes of food are due to be distributed on Wednesday, while President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to visit Mayotte on Thursday.

Mayotte is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in shanty towns.

Chido – the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years – brought wind speeds of more than 225km/h (140mph) on Saturday, flattening areas where people lived in shacks with sheet metal roofs and leaving fields of dirt and debris.

“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” Nasrine, a teacher who did not give her last name, told AFP in her destroyed neighbourhood in Pamandzi.